


Count to Three

by lsdme



Category: Generation Kill, Generation Kill/Dark Tower!AU
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-24 11:58:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lsdme/pseuds/lsdme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate gathers Brad, Ray, and Walt from different points in time to save the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> No prior knowledge of the Dark Tower series is needed to understand this - It'd just be a plus if you did. I have to thank [](http://deedlit50.livejournal.com/profile)[**deedlit50**](http://deedlit50.livejournal.com/)</lj> for beta'ing her heart out on this, and i love her for it. To [](http://alethea293.livejournal.com/profile)[**alethea293**](http://alethea293.livejournal.com/) because this wouldn't have been finished without her and she put up with my whining about this for eight months. [](http://michelleantonia.livejournal.com/profile)[**michelleantonia**](http://michelleantonia.livejournal.com/) And [](http://timeofnoreply.livejournal.com/profile)[**timeofnoreply**](http://timeofnoreply.livejournal.com/) for even existing and giving me hope when all was lost. With the biggest thanks to [](http://mcl4r3n.livejournal.com/profile)[**mcl4r3n**](http://mcl4r3n.livejournal.com/)</lj> who, when i said i had an idea for a gk/dt crossover she was the one who understood what i was going for.

_  
**Count to Three: Part 1**   
_   


**Title:** Count to Three  
 **Author:** [](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/profile)[**l_s_d_me**](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/)  
 **Fandom:** Generation Kill/Dark Tower!AU  
 **Pairing:** Brad/Nate; Ray and Walt (as hetero soul mates)  
 **Word Count:** 45,600  
 **Rating:** R/NC17; for sexual situations and violence/deaths  
 **Disclaimer:** All information is false, and not written for profit. Footnotes at the end.  


 **Title:** Count to Three  
 **Part:** Part 1  
 **Author:** [](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/profile)[**l_s_d_me**](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/)  
 **Pairing:** Brad/Nate; Ray and Walt

  
Time means nothing.

The first time it happened Nate blacked out for hours. The second time he was prepared but confused. The third time he ran until he was drenched in sweat and staring out into a landscape that hadn't been seen for half a millennium.

That was then.

Now Nate was running for a different reason. His shirt stuck to his back as he tore through the woods, dodging trees and thorny vines he knew would mean his death. Moving at this speed was made even more difficult with the rain obscuring his vision beyond a few feet in front of him. As he ran the Shadow drew closer to him, the air becoming frigid as steam rose off his burning frame. Nate clutched the pistols he held to his chest, if he lost them then he would lose everything else.

This wasn't the first time Nate had encountered the Shadow while shifting through time. It was just as fluid as the ages were, but it was much more deadly.

Nate could sense the ground shift beneath him, carving down into a dangerous slope. In the next three strides he built up speed. His left foot pushed hard off a root sticking out of the earth as he propelled himself up and out right where the ground dropped. He gripped the pistols until there was an imprint of them in his hand. A sharp cry breached the silent woods as Nate fell. Nate didn't need to see the ground to know he was nearing it, he could sense it. _Three_ , he thought as he cleared his mind; _Two_ , and he relaxed his entire body save for the grip he held. Preparing. _One_.

***

Brad was fifteen when he struck out on his own. His parents didn't care. Time had moved past the point of putting age and maturity as one.

"Good luck, Bradley," his father had said. "I hope to see you again one day."

Brad shook his hand before he left, sliding on his leather jacket as he walked towards the front hall. The only thing his mother said to him was a simple "lock the door on your way out," yelled from the kitchen. Brad stopped and looked towards where her voice had come from as he thought about whether or not to hug her goodbye. He kept walking.

The next ten years were spent drifting. Brad went everywhere and nowhere on his bike. He lived out of a backpack he picked up sixty miles outside of what used to be Missouri, when the states were still divided into their old names. Saint Louis was still called Saint Louis though, and Brad appreciated that. There wasn't much else he appreciated. The world was dull, the people were untrustworthy, and nothing ever changed. Brad loved his bike though, and most days that was enough for him.

Most days.

Still. There was a niggling feeling in the back of his mind. Behind all the bullshit something told him that " _most days_ " wasn't good enough for him. He needed more; was destined for more. But destiny was for fools and had drifted into legend long before Brad was even weaned from his mother. Long before time was still time and was counted by minutes and years.

Brad made do though. With what he knew about the world, and instinct, he could get anywhere. And anywhere usually got him hustling at pool or darts.

“You’re the son of a whore, Colbert,” Craig growled at him as he handed over five hundred dollars.

“Tsk tsk, Schwetje,” Brad said, pocketing the money. “That’s not very nice, there are children around.”

There weren’t. There wasn’t anybody there except for drunks and prostitutes.

Craig looked around for a second as if expecting to see toddlers crawling at his feet. Brad rolled his eyes before downing the rest of his drink.

“Just get out of here,” Craig said as he brought his eyes back to Brad. “And I’d think twice before coming back.”

As Brad slid his jacket back into place he eyed Craig. Their relationship had never been good. Brad would roll into town on his bike, stay a few days making money by besting drunks at bar games, and then leave. Craig hated him.

“Don’t blame me because you learned to play darts from a blind monkey with its hands tied behind its back.”

Craig puffed his chest out indignant. “I learned to play from my father!”

“Like I said,” Brad stated as he walked out.

He could hear Craig yell as he kicked his bike’s engine to life. _He’ll never learn_ , Brad thought to himself as he pulled into the street, not knowing where he was headed, not caring.

And he then he rode.

For months he crossed the country back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. He drove through the rain, through drought, through back country woods that smelled like true nature.

He rode.

Until one day he was sitting in traffic, in one of those rare cities where people were everywhere, when his head cleared. He didn’t feel lost, he didn’t feel angry. It was peace, a calmness that shot through him. He looked to the side and knew what the source was immediately. It was a man. Brad could feel it coming off of him.

It wasn't that Brad was staring at him, he wasn't. It's just that he couldn't look away. He didn’t know what caught his attention. Brad was just sitting at a stoplight on his bike when this man walked by. There was something about the way he moved that made Brad follow him with his eyes. He didn't fit in with everybody else moving along the sidewalk this time of day, but at the same time he fit in better than any of them.

A horn blared behind Brad, impatient drivers wanting to get to their location as fast as possible. As Brad picked his feet up, hitting the gas, the man turned and looked at him. _His attention was caught by the honking, nothing else_ , Brad thought. But his eyes went straight to Brad and even at this distance they looked like a color green that didn’t exist in this world. Brad watched him as he turned a corner between shops, disappearing from view.

The minute he was no longer in front of Brad, he felt a pull in his gut to follow. He'd never felt anything like this before; a sensation so absolute, so strong within himself.

Brad could see it in his mind's eye - getting off his bike, leaving it there in the middle of the busy road while he searched down the man with the green eyes. But he ended up just sitting there frozen trying to resist the pounding in his chest. It was nearly painful for him. Why was this happening to him and who was this guy? Brad physically shook his head back and forth, willing the feeling deep inside of him to subside.

His hands shook as he forced his attention to the front. He started his bike again before glancing once more at the darkened alley. Brad knew he was still there watching him, he could feel it covering him like a blanket. As he pulled back into traffic the air felt like soup against his skin, thick and unyielding against what his mind and body wanted to do, needed to do.

***

Nate could feel it everywhere, the eyes on him.

He was hyper aware of the man on the motorcycle watching him. A shift of his shoulder and his gait changed, a move that Nate knew would make him practically disappear within a crowd. But the man never looked away, never blinked. A horn blared and Nate turned to look, thinking he would see the motorcycle moving past him in the road. But he was still sitting there, his eyes piercing right through Nate's guise.

Nate's breath caught in his throat, knowing at once that he was one of them; one of his.

 _So this is how it starts_ , ran through Nate's head over and over again.

With the turn of a corner Nate slid in between two buildings. He liked to go unnoticed in the world. He had seen enough of it in enough times to know that getting noticed wasn't always the smartest thing to do. But he couldn't leave him, not this soon. So instead of continuing down the alley he stopped in the shadow of two buildings and watched him. Nate could see it all there on his face; the pull, the struggle, and if Nate had any doubts before they were gone in an instant.

 _The first of the three_ , Nate thought as a small smile curled his lips.

***

Brad made it to his room using little more than muscle memory to get there. It took him but a minute to throw the windows open and kneel down to breathe in the cool air. His head sunk against the window sill as he tried to calm himself. As soon as he closed his eyes the green eyed man would swim to the front of his mind. Brad didn't think he knew him, but there was something about him that called to Brad like a song.

As Brad eased himself onto the bed he wasn’t expecting to fall asleep. He didn’t even bother to remove his jeans and boots. He lied there thinking about what he had felt, deciding that the next day he would ride around until he found that man. Brad didn’t remember sleep taking him.

 _"BRAD!" Nate yelled as he struggled to break the hold on his neck that the Beast held. Brad spun his head around quickly assessing the situation. There were four Beasts after them. Nate had killed one in the initial scuffle, but there were two to his left fighting with men Brad couldn't see clearly. He hoped they were okay._

 _He turned his attention back to Nate; whose eyes were watering as he struggled for breath. Without thinking about it Brad raised his hand, the ancient revolver's aim was true as ever as he shot. Squeeze. Turn. Squeeze. Turn._

 _Instantly Nate was beside him as they walked down the street. The sun shone down on them, sweat wetting their brows. Brad didn't know where they were. This place was as foreign to him as anything he could even imagine._

 _"Where are we?" he asked Nate._

 _Nate's gaze leveled on him. "I believe the thing to ask, Brad, is when are we."_

 _"Then when are we, Nate?"_

 _"1988."_

 _"Why?"_

 _"We need him."_

 _"Need what?"_

 _"I need you to get up."_

 _"What?"_

 _"UP! WAKE UP BRAD!"_

Brad shot up in his bed.

"What the fuck," Brad breathed out. He could feel his heart trying to pound out of his chest, causing his whole body to vibrate. The sound of the man with green eye’s voice, Nate apparently, was still ringing in his head telling him to wake up. Brad was awake now, but for what?

He slid off the bed, looking around the room slowly. Nothing seemed out of place. It was dark out so Brad left the lights off as he moved about letting his eyes fully adjust to the night.

That was when he saw it. Darkness. Movement. A Shadow. Brad tilted his head in an attempt to focus his eyes more sharply on what he thought he was seeing. It was a pulse more than anything; a blackness slightly expanding and retracting in regular intervals. Brad crouched to the ground, hovering there in his cat-like stance waiting to see what would happen next.

Suddenly it shot forward as if pulled from the middle by a string. Brad fell to the ground, rolling to the side.

He stood up, eyes searching everywhere. His body was too wired, too on edge. Brad consciously worked on relaxing, slowing down his breath one inhale at a time. That was when he finally saw it. The air was vibrating around the edges. The longer he stared at it the clearer it became. Yes, it was a Shadow, but there was more too it. Parts of it seemed to have a shape, slightly human but more distorted.

The room seemed lighter in comparison and Brad could see almost as clearly as if it were day. He glanced at the door. Getting out through it seemed possible, but then he would be stuck with it in the hallway. The window was Brad’s best bet for getting past this thing. He took one final deep breath before he lunged towards the window. Brad could feel it up against his back, ice cold, sucking the energy from him.

The air outside seemed steamy after the feel of the Shadow behind him. He was almost completely out the window when it felt like his feet had been thrust into nitrogen, nearly freezing on the spot. Brad twisted to the side, grabbing the pipe outside his window he pulled himself free. He wanted to lower himself slowly, but couldn’t risk waiting. With twenty feet left to go he dropped.

He hit the ground rolling, trying to keep pressure off his feet as much as he could. Brad looked up to see the Shadow sliding down the wall toward him.

“BRAD!” someone yelled from behind him. “Catch!”

Brad moved just in time to reach out, a revolver settling into his hands. Without thinking he brought it forward and shot.

The scream that pierced the air rattled him as the creature sucked in on itself, disappearing into nothing.

Brad fell back, breathing hard against the grass. He didn’t hear the footsteps but someone was there; the man with the eyes. _Nate_ , Brad reminded himself. Nate looked down at him, a curious smile playing on his lips. He reached out a hand to Brad, waiting. Brad knew this was the moment his life had been building for. This man and wherever life leads from here would be all part of the plan. A plan he never knew existed but had now sunk its teeth so far into him that he didn’t know how he had ever survived doing anything else.

When their hands touched Brad felt it all there: time, age, peace. Seeing Nate this closely was a completely different experience from earlier. He was taller than Brad had originally thought and looked older, harder. His hair was cropped short, regulation almost. But the eyes, they still appeared to be something different, something new that Brad had never seen before.

“Hello,” Nate said. “I’m pleased to meet you Brad.”

Brad had a million questions so he went with the easiest one. “How do you know my name?” he asked, still holding onto Nate’s hand.

Nate shrugged, smiling almost imperceptibly. “How did you know how to land so as not to break your legs? How did you catch the gun when I threw it? How did you hit the Shadow right where you needed to without knowing?”

Brad looked at him dumbfounded; he hadn’t realized what he just did seemed improbable. He huffed out a laugh, causing the smile to grow on Nate’s face.

“Some things you just know, Brad,” Nate said filling in the blanks. “Come on, we should get out of here.”

As they walked away Brad glanced up at his window. It still looked ordinary, as if nothing other-worldly had just happened. Nate stopped abruptly, almost causing them to run into each other.

“I’m Nate by the way,” he said, catching Brad’s attention once more. “But then, I think you already knew that.”

***

"A record?" Brad asked, his brow creased in concentration.

It only took about fifteen minutes to get to Nate's apartment. It would've taken longer but Nate led Brad through a bizarre series of shortcuts that cut the time in half. When they arrived he made Brad put his feet in a tub of hot water. "I've seen those Shadows freeze body parts off faster than you can blink," Nate had said. "You need heat."

Brad had tried to object, telling Nate that he was fine. Nate knew he was lying, knew his feet had to hurt like hell. He shook his head and pushed Brad towards the bathroom. "Come on, Brad. Get in there," Nate said, his hand resting on Brad's shoulder. He tried to send reassurance to him through his touch. Brad looked at him for a moment, his eyes flicking back and forth as he tried to settle on a decision. Nate just stood there as he let Brad work through it; he had to decide to trust Nate on his own.

"It's only water," Nate told him, giving him an open and earnest look.

That's how they ended up sitting in Nate's bathroom, Brad's jeans rolled up to his knees with his feet sitting in about a foot of water in the tub. Nate sat at the opposite end of the tub on a chair he brought in from the kitchen.

"A record," Brad repeated slowly.

"Yes."

Nate wasn't exactly sure he was explaining this clearly, but he had to make Brad understand.

"Time," he started, "is like water. It flows through everything, coming from the earth, through the seas and clouds, and continues ever on. There are ebbs and flows as it goes round and round and round." Nate said the last part slowly, moving his finger in a circle to emphasize his point. "It's like a record; it spins in a circle - never stopping, never breaking."

Nate waited for Brad to nod his head, show any sign that he comprehended. _It all starts here_ , Nate thought, _with this man_. Brad finally nodded, urging Nate on.

"Sometimes people come around who want to end this record, the track you live. I've seen it," Nate paused, steeling himself before continuing. "Mine got turned on its side and the whole fucking world ended in chaos. I don't want that for this track."

Brad tilted his head, his eyes boring into Nate. "Your world?" Brad said, his voice even. "Where are you from?"

Nate admired how calm Brad sounded.

"I'm just...I'm from a different time and place," Nate said, his voice guarded again.

"You're one cryptic motherfucker, you know that right?" Brad was smiling as he said it, flexing his toes in the cooling water.

The smile that broke across Nate's face happened whether he wanted it to or not. It had been too long since he had felt kinship with anybody; always slipping through time, staying only long enough to find out what he needed to know. It was lonely. Nate picked up a towel from the shelf, laying it flat out across his lap.

"Put your feet up here." Nate felt that Brad would resist so he lowered his voice, making it sound as authoritative as he could. It worked; Brad shifted and lifted his feet out of the water and onto the towel. Nate wrapped it around his feet and started kneading the bottoms, forcing the blood flow to increase. He waited to continue until Brad relaxed into it, his attention back on the conversation.

"So," Brad started. "Someone is here trying to disrupt time?"

"Not quite. Disrupting insinuates they want it to go on. The Traveler wants to end it."

Nate could feel Brad's body tense as he said it so he pressed a little harder on a spot at the base of Brad’s foot; a spot he knew would relax him.

“Who’s the Traveler?” Brad asked, his arms crossed as he listened.

“He’s a person…a being,” Nate said. But he felt as though he wasn’t making any sense, wasn’t getting the point well enough across. “He arrives and spends however long necessary to find the room – the cradle of your civilization – and then destroys it.”

“But why?”

Nate huffed out a laugh. “Your guess is as good as mine Brad.”

Brad stared at him, his blue eyes bright in the dim light of the bathroom. Nate let him stare, let him take him in. He didn’t let many people do this, look at him, study him, it felt almost intimate. Finally Brad breathed deep, a smile cracking his lips.

“You’re not being completely honest with me, sir.”

“Sir?” Nate laughed. “We’re roughly the same age, Brad. Give or take a few…years,” he finished, speaking quietly.

Brad and Nate lapsed into silence. Nate could see in Brad’s eyes that he was going over everything since that first moment they had spotted each other on the street. He was hoping Brad wouldn’t question him about the bond, the connection between them. There would be time for that, plenty of time, but as of now Nate only knew the old tales about this. A group of four people brought together who are destined for the same path, a ka-tet. There was no way to explain the pull he felt toward Brad and he knew Brad must feel it toward him as well. Nate hoped he would never have to try and explain it. He hoped that Brad would understand it as it flowed through him; through all of them.

“Nate,” Brad said, rousing them both out of their heads. “What’s next?”

Nate nodded at him, showing his approval. “We find the others.”

“How?” Brad asked, his eyebrows quirking up. “Are they here in… in my time?”

“Come on,” Nate said as he patted Brad’s ankle in a way to motion him to shift over. “I’ll show you.”

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/0001ab0w/)   


***

Brad looked up at lights and signs that were lit brightly even in the daylight. The color everywhere caught his attention. _It’s so bright here_ , he thought. Even the grass seemed greener, the birds and even the people more vibrant.

Nate was beside him as they walked down the street. The sun shone down on them, sweat wetting their brows. Brad didn't know where they were. This place was as foreign to him as anything he could even imagine.

"Where are we?" he asked Nate.

Nate's gaze leveled on him. "I believe the thing to ask Brad, is when are we."

Brad stopped, a memory twitching.

"Then when are we, Nate?"

"1988."

"Why?"

"We need him."

***

Joshua Raymond Person wasn’t anybody.

“You’re such a useless piece of shit,” his father had told him daily until the day he died. Ray didn’t cry. He just shrugged, went outside, and got high until he couldn’t tell if he was still alive or not.

Ray was fifteen when he ran away from his aunt’s house for the first time, and seventeen when he didn’t come back anymore. Nobody ever tried to find him. But why would they? He was skinny, too skinny by far. His hair was matted and pulled in every direction possible, and he wore nothing but black pants and holey concert tees from the seventies. They were from “when music was better, not this happy-day fucking horse-shit they play now,” he’d say when asked. When he wasn’t asked, he secretly jerked off to pictures of Ally Sheedy and loved “Come on Eileen,” singing it to himself when he was lonely or scared.

In his mind he had it pretty good; always being able to make his way. He could fix just about anything under the sun, and often did. By the time he was twenty he had his own shit-hole apartment in New York City, a little more than no meat on his bones, and a constant headache from snorting cocaine for three meals a day.

"You need to get your shit together, man," Jeff said as he pulled Ray onto his bed.

Jeff had the apartment next to Ray's. The two were friendly, but they fluctuated in that weird space between being perfect strangers and knowing way too much about each other.

"Fuck you, Carisalez," Ray mumbled, his chest jerking with shivers.

Ray angled his eyes up, seeing double of his neighbor, twice the man, twice the disappointment on his face. "Leave me alone," Ray said stronger. "Leave!" he yelled when Jeff just stood there looking at him in disgust.

"Just don't die on my doorstep, okay?" Jeff spat out before turning away, slamming the door behind him.

"Fuck you," Ray said as he curled inward, collapsing in on himself. He laid there shaking, miserable, wishing life was different but not knowing how to change it. Nothing ever changed.

Ray closed his eyes in an effort to concentrate on stopping the shaking. He breathed in and out, his labored chest heaving. He hugged himself close, humming, _"with you in that dress, my thoughts I confess, verge on dirty... ahh come on Eileen."_

Four days go missing from Ray's life somewhere between passing out, dreaming, waking, vomiting, and doing it all over again.

The dreams floated through his head like a mist leaving nothing but traces of themselves behind in crevices. Fog laced membranes. He remembered nothing but words: _Walt, Sand, Cry, Shoot, Help, Nate, Stop, Leave, Blue._

A loud banging on his door finally roused him enough to the point where he could stand, shuffling his feet to see who it was. Pulling open the door he found the hallway completely empty. Ray stepped out into the hallway, the one sock he had on snagging on a nail. "Motherfuckers," he whispered before moving back inside his apartment.

Ray stood there swaying back against his door. He didn't know what day it was, and thought that maybe it was October. But it didn't matter; nothing in Ray's life mattered. To Ray nothing mattered in this second but coffee, and a lot of it. From the spot by his door he could see the empty coffee can sitting on the floor of the kitchen. Ray closed his eyes, cursing himself inwardly for forgetting to buy some more.

It took him another three hours to make it out of his apartment; the hallway lights flickering as he shuffled toward the stairwell.

The moment Ray stepped outside his building he stumbled backwards, the light blinding him. He held one of his hands up in front of his eyes, the black fingernail polish mostly chipped away save for a small ring around the bottom of each nail. Ray squinted at his hand as the realization washed over him that he hadn't seen himself in nearly a week. He looked down at his outfit, dirty jeans and a black sleeveless shirt, before feeling his hair where he had half of a mohawk.

He looked cracked and he knew it.

The street wasn't very crowded as he moved down it. Ray assumed that meant it was the middle of the day...maybe a weekday. He walked and walked, feeling the blood begin to flow through his body again. His muscles loosened up after becoming stiff from days of nothing. Ray had neared the park by the time his body finally felt alive again, vibrating as he breathed in the fall air. Everything looked brighter, smelled crisper as he walked further into the park. His chest thumped loudly, the vibration within his skin rising and rising with each step he took. He looked up into the sky as he realized that for the first time in years his head wasn't fuzzy, wasn't filled with unwanted thoughts.

Ray shivered at the sensation. He sat down on a bench, exhaling peacefully before noticing two men sitting there already. Ray blinked at them, but didn't look away. He had never seen two people look more out of place in his life, yet at the same time look as if they had grown there along with the trees and plants that surrounded them.

The pair just sat there perfectly at ease watching the park, but not watching Ray as he observed them. Ray thought they looked brighter than people normally did, as if they knew how to glow from the inside. One of them turned his head, looking straight at Ray and giving him a friendly nod.

“Good Morning,” he said, his eyes glowing a green somehow brighter than his skin.

Ray swallowed trying to find his voice. “Morning,” he scratched out, eliciting a smile from the man.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw, this man tap the taller man next to him on the side of the leg. It was a small movement, but Ray was paying close enough attention that he saw it.

When the second one turned Ray was immediately struck by the color of his eyes; Blue. Blue, Ray thought. He squeezed his eyes shut, his face flinching involuntarily as he remembered a dream, more than a dream but another life it seemed. It all came flooding back in full color, flipping through his brain like a supersonic photo album: _Walt, Sand, Cry, Shoot, Help, Nate, Stop, Leave, Blue._

Ray opened his eyes and both of the men were staring at him, not even attempting to hide the fact. Ray’s eyes flicked between them before landing on the man with the green eyes, bright and friendly.

“Nate,” Ray said with a slight nod, tilting his head as he looked at him.

Nate reached out to shake his hand, leaning over Brad in the process. Ray noticed how Brad held his breath when he did it. _So they might not know each other that well_ , Ray noted before his hand and Nate’s enclosed around each other, erasing every thought from his mind. He felt as if he had been electrocuted, energy soaring through his body, forcing him to become truly alive for the first time in years. Ray stared at where their hands met. In that moment he saw and felt his entire existence; who he had been and what he was to become. His breath caught in his throat as Nate released his hand.

“Walt…” Ray whispered to himself in a confused tone. “Walt,” he said louder.

“Ray?” Nate said, his eyes settling on Brad with a look of concern and excitement in what this could mean for them all.

Ray stopped, looking suddenly up at Nate. “We have to find Walt!”

“Maybe we should do this somewhere else,” Brad said, speaking for the first time.

Ray’s eyes leveled on him as if he had forgotten his presence. He knew his eyes had gone wide while he took Brad in head to toe. Breathing deeply, Ray centered himself before relaxing back against the bench.

“Oh hey, Iceman,” he said as if he had known Brad forever. Brad smiled at him and nodded.

They all settled into silence, everything forgotten save for the peace between them. People walked by lost in their own worlds. Nobody noticed the three men sitting there, not speaking, not looking at one another, just sitting.

"I don't understand these people’s clothes," Brad said, breaking the silence.

Nate laughed, dropping his chin to his chest to hide his smile.

"Fuckin' A, man," Ray said, hitting Brad on the arm. "Oversized neon gives me nightmares."

"Neon?" Brad looked at Ray in confusion. "They don't have neon where I'm from. Is it that bright green shit on that woman?"

Brad was pointing at a couple of girls down the path from them; wearing black biker shorts, bright green and pink shirts, and Scrunchies holding their hair off to the side.

"Don't have neon?" Ray asked. "Where the fuck...?"

And then it hit him. They weren't from there. Ray looked at them again, really looked at them; their clothes, their hair, the way they held themselves. No, they were from a time beyond Ray and he knew it. He didn't know how, but he knew for sure they didn't belong in nineteen-fucking-eighty eight.

"You're not from here." It wasn't a question anymore.

"No," Nate said, shaking his head minutely. "We're not."

"And Walt?"

"I don't know when Walt is yet. But you," Nate's eyes glowed as his voice sped up. "You do."

Ray smiled as he stood, reaching his arms up above his head to stretch. He glanced at Brad and Nate, his smile never wavering.

"He's Molly Ringwald, Nate, and we're taking him to prom."

"Who?" Brad whispered to Nate as Ray struck down back towards his apartment.

*

“This place is a shit-hole,” Brad observed loudly as the door closed behind him.

“Be careful, Brad,” Ray said as he walked over to open a window. “The rats might hear you.”

Nate looked around the whole apartment, because it really wasn’t more than just a room, and thought that Brad might be over-estimating his opinion of it. There was an old green couch off to one side with half of the stuffing visible, and a scratched up coffee table in front of it. Across toward the kitchen area there was an old metal kitchen table with a single chair. Nate thought it might be the loneliest looking room he’d ever seen.

Brad was standing silently beside him, his relaxed stance helping to put Nate at ease. They looked at each other as Ray rummaged through a stack of papers in the corner, dust billowing up around him.

Traffic was driving by outside and they could hear the tenants on Ray's floor arguing, having sex, and watching television. Nate could feel the heat coming off of Brad's arm, only inches from his. He felt like time was moving in slow motion. Each thump of his heart, piece of dust in the air, and breath inhaled floated through the room enveloping them all as they searched for their fourth.

"A-ha!" Ray yelled, thrusting a piece of paper in the air.

Nate refocused on the moment to find Brad watching him still, his eyebrows creased. A smile touched Nate's lips before Ray was pushing past them to the kitchen table.

"Walt is here," Ray said. His thin fingers circled Virginia on the map he had rummaged through the corner to find. He left a perfect oval shape through the dust still settled on the map.

Brad leaned in close, swiping a hand across to clear it off.

"I've never seen a map of the states still intact," he said, a slight tremor and awe noticeable in his voice. "Everything looks smaller, confining."

"When are you from?" Ray asked.

Brad shrugged, "After this," he said with a broad sweep of his hand.

Nate allowed his eyes to linger on Brad before turning his attention back to Ray.

"Are you sure Walt's in Virginia?" he asked, needing to be sure before he tried to locate his time.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's there, trust me, man," Ray told him, a slight jerk causing his right arm to jump. Nate's eyes went straight to it, noticing the sheen of sweat breaking out there. Ray's eyes followed Nate's to his arm. When their eyes met Nate noticed a slight blush at the base of his neck.

 _One thing at a time_ , Nate thought as he turned his focus back to the jagged outline of Virginia. _So this is where he is_.

Nate let his mind go as he touched the map. He felt himself being pulled through time and space. Doing this always left him feeling thin, but it had to be done to find Walt. They needed a fourth. He splayed his hands, gripping the side of the table until his knuckles looked bleached white. Nate let everything go, all restraint, all thought, all of it gone as he reached out with his entire person, searching. He felt something warm against his face causing him to shiver before he leaned into it, delving deeper.

Finally it hit him and he could vaguely sense his knees starting to buckle. It was like looking though a pair of eyes on a world that wasn’t his. He could see books, wooden chairs and tables, pens, pencils – a shift – the eyes were looking in a mirror, the face of a young man staring back at him full of sadness and determination. It shifted again and he was outside surrounded by trees and a river. Nate could smell the air through him, tasting the centuries of industry through the atmosphere. It was all there, and he knew: 1996.

Nate opened his eyes to find Brad’s hands cupping his face, concern filling his eyes. _Warmth_ was all Nate could think.

“Are you okay?” Brad said to him, panic just barely contained.

“You were transparent, dude,” Ray said in awe, staring at Nate like he wasn’t real.

“I’m fine,” Nate told them, closing his eyes, making sure all of him was back there. “I’m fine.”

Brad let go of his face, moving to the other side of the table. Nate felt the absence of warmth immediately, shivering inwardly.

“He’s in 1996,” Nate said, sitting down in the kitchen chair. “We should…we should get going.”

Both Brad and Ray spoke up at the same time.

“No way, man,” Ray said, overpowering Brad. “We’re not going anywhere until you recharge your Flux Capacitor. I don’t want to get stuck in some limbo with no way to phone home.”

Nate looked at him, and then to Brad. “Okay,” he agreed, the shaking feeling still rattling his bones.

“Me and Brad are gonna go get some coffee. You. Stay here,” Ray said, not leaving any room for argument. Nate didn’t think he had it in him to argue now anyway. It had always been harder for him to initially locate somebody than to go to their time. At least the hardest part was over with.

Nate got up and walked over to the couch. Sitting down on it he discovered that it was a lot more comfortable than it looked. He leaned back and shut his eyes, his head resting on a piece of exposed stuffing.

Brad and Ray made their way to the door, talking in hushed tones. Nate could only make out the end of their conversation before the door closed.

“What’s a Flux Capacitor?” Brad asked.

Ray laughed, “You’re such a freak, Colbert.”

Nate sat there in silence for a long time after they left; the feeling of Brad’s hand still burning his cheek. He cursed himself inwardly. This wasn’t part of the plan. He knew the connection with the first would be strong, but this, this was more than that; more than just the connective tissues of time holding them together. Nate shuddered as he thought of what Brad might be feeling. Was it as strong as it was within himself? Or was Nate just suffering from infatuation and nothing more. Either way he couldn’t let anything happen. He wouldn’t.

*

"No more of this shit!"

Brad's voice reverberating through the room jolted Nate awake. He slowly opened his eyes, careful not to alert them to his consciousness. The room was dark and Nate had no idea how long he had been out for.

"Brad," Ray warned, reaching for something Brad held in his hand.

"No. It's not just your life you're fucking up anymore by using this shit. It's mine, it'll be Walt's, and Nate, who is doing this for fucking all of us."

Brad threw the bag he was holding onto the floor, a small amount of white dust floated out from it. Ray jerked towards it, itching to pick it up, but stayed glued to his spot. They stood tense facing each other, neither of them willing to back down; their bodies straining as each readied to pounce.

Nate's eyes drifted closed again, the fuzzy outline of the pair fading to black.

*

When Nate awoke again it was early morning, the room still grey. He sat up to find Brad asleep on the floor next to the couch, one arm wedged underneath the cushion Nate's head was resting on. Ray was nowhere to be found. Nate stepped over Brad, tip-toeing to the bathroom.

Turning the light on the bathroom revealed Ray to be sitting on the floor, eyes and nose red. He looked up at Nate, defeat evident on his face.

Nate stepped in and closed the door behind him. He leaned against it, lowering himself down to the floor. He did nothing but sit there with Ray, letting him know that he was there for whatever.

"I'm sorry," Ray whispered after a while. "It's just...I'm....I'm nothing. Worthless and disgusting. Leave me here, Nate. You and Brad...are you sure you didn't make a mistake? I'm not worth this."

His words cut through Nate like they were being said about himself.

"You know I discovered I could move through time when I was eleven. I was balled up on the floor of an attic, my fingers and toes so cold I was sure I was about to lose them." Nate stopped, his mind working hard to remember a time and a place that couldn't be more foreign to him now than if he had never been there. "I thought I was better off dead; that the world was better off without a leech like me sucking the oxygen away from the worthy."

"What changed?" Ray said, finding his voice again.

"I realized I wasn't tied to who I thought I was." Nate fixed his eyes on Ray's, holding him there. "You're more than you think you are, Ray."

Ray nodded slowly.

"Now," Nate smiled at him as he stood, holding his hand out to Ray. "Want to come and find our Walt?"

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/0001942w/)   


***

She pulsed around him, her back arched as he held her wrists on either side of her head. Covered in sweat they moved as one. The air around them sparking through the morning fog coming off the river as it floated through the trees. He could see her shining face below his, the smile in her eyes as she adjusted her legs around him.

Walt thought she was beautiful like this; open, loving, care free. She loved Walt for a while when nobody else had, not even his own parents. They held onto each other as they rode over the edge, the power between them wracking their bodies.

That was before though. Before she got tired of hiding how she really felt. Sometimes he felt it break through; he could feel her startle and then stamp it back down. Walt tried to ignore it.

Before the quiet elevator in her apartment building where he could feel her apprehension. He had asked her about it and she slapped him hard across the face, her ring cutting his cheek.

She glared at him before speaking. “I’ve had it,” she told him. “I can’t take you knowing every little thing I’m feeling like a freak.”

Walt felt a little piece of him tear on the inside. “But you said…,” he searched for the right words. “Kelly, you said it was okay, that it didn’t bother you. You told me it….”

“I lied.” She let down all her guards. The relief, the fright, the love, all rolled off of her as she walked away.

That was all before now.

Walt let himself sink into the background; people avoided him just as much as he tried to skirt them. The few friends he had drifted away from. His parents only confirmed his inner thoughts that he was meant to be alone; that “nobody wants to be with someone like you.” Walt felt alone in the world and he hadn’t even made it through two decades of living.

He spent most days by himself. He would walk to school, attend classes like one should, but he never became close to anybody. He would sit in the hall and listen to the other students hoop and holler about their latest drunken night out as he read. Sometimes he would feel regret coming off of them, a night they wouldn’t quite remember, a person whose face was fuzzy in their mind, time lost forever. Still, Walt couldn’t help but envy them just a little; envy the brotherhood they had with others.

The concept wasn’t completely foreign to him though. Walt had felt something similar every time he walked among the rows and rows of books in the library. As he ran his hand along the bindings he searched for a new friend. Often times he found himself holding _Catch-22_ , the first sentence already ringing in his head before he would even open the cover.

 _"It was love at first sight.  
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."_

Walt would sit there for hours, wrapped up in Yossarian’s world, laughing to himself as the characters spoke in circles, arguing with one another.

“Walt, dear,” one of the older librarians said as they came up behind him. “It’s nearly closing time.”

“Oh I’m sorry,” he said, closing the book.

“It’s no problem at all.” She smiled at him before making her way back to the front of the giant hall. As she turned she dropped two of the books she held. Walt jumped to his feet, running over to help her.

“Let me get these for you,” he said as he picked them up.

She smiled at him again before motioning for him to follow her with the books. “You’re such a sweet boy. Your parents must be so proud of you.”

Walt just followed her in silence.

*

"What do you think about Europe?"

"Don't be stupid," he said, fixing her with a look of disgust. "If I wanted to summer with gypsy scum I'd join the circus."

She kept her eyes downcast as she spoke next. "What about the boy?"

He laughed. "What about him? He's no matter to me."

"I just thought...."

"Of course you would you stupid woman. Why don't you take some pills with your wine and go to bed."

"You're such filth," she spat. "I have no idea why I even married you."

"Like anyone else would have you."

Walt sat three feet away from his parents as they spoke. They neither looked at him nor spoke to him even when he was the subject of their discussion. To say that they disliked Walt would be underestimating the situation; they hated him and often said they wished him dead. Walt knew they meant it.

"Fuck you," she whispered with cruelty in her voice.

Walt could see and disdain between the two as clearly as if it was a painting on canvas strung up on the wall.

"You bitch," he stood, towering over his wife. "You just prove that not all whores are worth what you pay for them."

Her face turned red as she lifted her hand, moving to strike her husband across the face. She couldn't gain momentum from her angle and he caught her hand, grabbing both wrists he dragged her to her feet.

Walt sat there, his breath turning rapid. He shot up from his chair and taking both of his parents by their arms. _Not tonight_ , he thought. _Please no fighting tonight_. As if faced with a shock of terror, both his mother and father let go of each other and tore their arms away from him at once.

"Don't touch me!" his father yelled as his mother rubbed the spot Walt had just set his hand.

Walt shrank back from them; the flood of emotions coming from the pair tore at his chest. There was nothing he could do here, and the sooner he realized it the better. He glanced back at his parents, still standing there rigid, before passing through the doorway and up the stairs to his room.

*

 _Walt was walking down the street, everything covered in a thin layer of snow as it sparkled in the moonlight. A man walked next to him. He turned to see re-assurance there in the eyes looking back at him, bright green even at night._

 _“Are you sure?” he asked Walt, resting a hand on the back of his arm. Walt noticed how he didn’t flinch, didn’t shy away from touching him._

 _Walt looked up at the house, his house, before nodding and walking up the stairs. When he saw himself reflected in the glass it was an older version of himself with longer hair, tanned face and the slightest hint of a beard. Both of them had scarves wrapped around their throats to keep out the winter air. Walt stood there with his hand in the air. Should he knock? Part of him felt as if he didn’t live here anymore, but it was his home so he entered._

 _The door opened to the desert. They took off running, flanked by two others. A low growl sounded from behind Walt, he turned just in time to see something drop to the ground, a gunshot echoing to his left. They all picked up speed, willing each other to move faster when the man next to Walt got tackled._

 _“RAY!” he yelled, skidding on the sandy rock as he turned around just in time to be thrown backward by a blow to the chest._

 _“Person, you need to get your shit together, man.”_

 _They were in a bedroom with torn curtains and piles of clothes in the corner._

 _Ray mumbled, his body jerking back and forth on his bed. Walt knelt beside him and grasped his hand. “Ray,” he whispered_

 _Ray’s half-lidded eyes tried to focus on him. "Let me die," Ray said._

 _"You’re not dying you idiot," Walt told him as he moved to ring out a wet washcloth._

 _Walt watched as Ray curled into a ball, hugging himself close, humming,_ "with you in that dress, my thoughts I confess, verge on dirty... ahh come on Eileen."

*

Walt’s eyes flew open with the taste of bile on his tongue. He barely made it to the bathroom before throwing up, his head ringing as sweat poured down him. He leaned his head against the porcelain hearing the ghost of a song he hadn’t heard since junior high float through his head.

*

The sound of his parents yelling at each other woke him up through the wall. Walt closed his eyes and rolled over finding that he was still laying on the bathroom floor. He pushed himself up, his arms shaking, weak from the night. Reaching up, Walt turned the knob in the tub and soon the shower was pouring hot down his back. He closed his eyes and let it wash away the nightmares and the rattling he felt in his bones.

He had never had such a vivid dream before. It terrified and excited him at the same time. Because it's one of the things Walt did best, he spent the following afternoon holed up in the library, studying book after book about dreams.

He found nothing, eventually giving up.

  
The library was quiet this time of night. Dark rows of stacks lit by small lamps overhead always made Walt feel as if he were in another world.

"Good evening, Walt," the Librarian said to him as he walked past. He smiled sheepishly at her and nodded, moving slowly into the depths. Even without much light Walt knew exactly where he was going, twelfth row, a quarter of the way down, fourth shelf from the ground. As he plucked _Catch-22_ from the shelf he felt calmer than he had in hours.

Walt began reading randomly from the middle of the book. It didn’t matter where he started; it all came full circle anyway. He cringed at the first mention of Snowden and his secrets spilling from him.

He let himself be pulled into the story, into Yossarian's time and place. There wasn't anything in the world Walt loved more than losing himself in a tale that took him away from his own existence. Hours passed by as Walt sunk down into the plush chair hidden in the stacks. The drop of a book startled Walt. He looked up to see a wiry black-haired man ducking to pick it up. Walt stared at him as recognition sparked in his chest; he could picture them together laughing, singing. Then his mind flipped to an image of the man curled up in a ball, humming quietly to himself. But then the feeling was gone, disappearing back beneath his ribs.

A moment later the clock chimed eleven. Walt sighed and shut his book. His parents locked the front door at midnight whether he was home or not; too often he had been left to sit in the yard against a tree until morning.

The place was silent as Walt made his way to the counter. Often he would just re-shelve the book since he knew precisely where it went, but tonight he wanted to check it out, wanted to keep the journey going. The office was empty as he glanced behind the counter. He turned going back through the stacks, glancing down each for someone to help him.

Finally he saw a worker holding a stack of books, re-shelving in silence.

"Excuse me," Walt said quietly as he stopped a couple feet from him.

The man raised his head, glancing kindly at Walt. "Yes?"

"I wanted to check this out," he said, gesturing with the book. "But nobody was up front."

A smile from the man turned something inside of Walt; a key he didn't know existed.

"I don't work here," he told Walt. He moved forward a little into the light from above in order to set his books onto the table. The thickness of the stack caught Walt's eye and he quickly read through the titles: _Iliad, Odyssey, Sophocles, and The Histories_. The man noticed Walt's gaze and shrugged. "What can I say," he said. "I like the Greeks."

Walt slowly brought his eyes back level with the man's. He looked completely unassuming in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, but there was power behind the facade that Walt could feel pulsating through him. Walt moved his hand to the side in order to set his book on the table, but missed. It was inches from the ground when the man caught it in one slick movement.

"Ahh," he said, " _Catch-22_."

"It's my favorite," Walt said, still not sure what to make of him.

The man closed his eyes before speaking: _"I mean it, Yossarian. You'll have to keep on your toes every minute of every day. They'll bend heaven and earth to catch you."_

When he opened them they looked an unearthly color, the green of them filling Walt like a spring morning's first breath. It wasn't anything he had ever felt from anybody before; it was such a pure drive for the better that almost made Walt cry. His head began to spin. He had seen him before, like a long forgotten dream.

The man stood there watching him, no judgment on his face. "I'm Nate."

Walt hesitated before taking his outstretched hand. It felt like minutes were passing as he looked at Nate, but he knew it could only have been seconds. Something inside Walt made him grasp Nate’s hand, knowing it would change things. Their hands met and he spoke quietly, "My name's Walt."

They stood there frozen in time for five seconds before Nate's eyes started to water, his frame beginning to shake. Walt tried to draw his hand back but Nate held on tighter, staring up at him with awe.

"You're the...," Nate started but couldn't finish. His knees shook and he let go, falling back against the shelves.

Walt was confused and scared. Suddenly there were two more men among them; a tall blond man rushed to Nate, grasping him by the shoulders and asking him if he was alright. The second, the wiry man from before walked cautiously up to Walt like he was a wild horse he was trying not to spook.

"Walt," he spoke as if they were old friends, long forgotten to each other. Their eyes met, Walt's blues fading into the deep brown of the ones facing him, and gasped as a shiver ran through his spine. Instinctively he reached out and grasped onto his arm. "Ray?" he said more strongly than he had spoken before. "Ray."

When they hugged Walt felt the weight of his life evaporating as if it was a nightmare ending in the morning light. He buried his face in Ray's neck as they embraced. Ray's senses, raging love and despair as they touched, made Walt want to hold him tighter. It was the first time in years anyone had let Walt willingly touch them.

He could hear Nate and Brad, he knew that now, speaking softly behind them.

"Are you sure you're okay, sir?" Brad asked, his hands now cupping Nate's face.

"Yes. It felt like...like electricity burning bright and warm," he stopped, his eyes meeting Brad's full on. "It felt like I was home again, you know?"

Brad smiled brightly at him, "I know."

Ray and Walt broke apart, standing close still. “Where do we go from here?” Walt asked.

“We get whatever you want to take with you,” Ray said. “And then we’ll be traveling through time and punching out motherfucking dinosaurs; shooting up lame ass Shadow bastards and fucking with their time-flow.”

Walt laughed loudly, the sound echoing through the library. He covered his mouth in an attempt to stifle the laughter still bubbling in his chest. Ray looked beyond pleased.

“Don’t encourage him,” Brad said as he and Nate moved to their side.

Nate turned serious. “Do you want to come with us, Walt? You don’t have to.”

Walt nodded as he straightened himself to his full height. “Yes, I do.”

*

Walt’s house was quiet as they entered through the front door. The watch on Walt’s wrist read 11:47 p.m., they were cutting it close.

On the way there they questioned Walt about his family. “Won’t they miss you?” they had asked. “What are you going to tell them?” In truth none of it mattered to Walt anymore. No, his family wouldn’t miss him. His house was toxic and slowly burning him from the ground up. Nothing would stop him from leaving tonight.

The four of them slowly made their way up to Walt’s bedroom. The house was dimly lit by sconces along the walls as they moved silently as one. Nate was walking to the rear of them all, watching behind them for any signs of trouble.

Walt’s bedroom consisted of nothing but a bed, a dresser, a nightstand, and several very large stacks of books. It took him only a moment to gather up a few pieces of clothing and two or three of his favorite books. He neither wanted nor needed anything else from this life; a life he wanted to forget. A loud crash behind him made him jump. He spun around to see his father standing in the doorway of his room.

“Who are these people?” his father asked, alcohol and anger filling his voice.

He looked around in a panic at all of them; Brad and Nate were leaning against his dresser as Ray sat on the foot of his bed. They looked relaxed, but Walt could see their muscles tensed and worried. He took a deep breath, fortifying himself at once.

“They’re friends, and we’re leaving so you don’t have to worry about it,” Walt said, his voice strong.

His father laughed maliciously. “Friends? Who would be friends with a freak like you? Who would want you in their life? God knows your mother and I don’t.”

Walt was shaking, his face red from embarrassment. “It doesn’t matter what you think,” he said quietly, his voice losing some of his strength. “You don’t have to be _burdened_ by my presence anymore.” He bent to pick up a book when his father stepped forward, slamming his hand down against it and causing Walt to drop it.

Ray was instantly at his side, his hand hovering protectively near Walt’s shoulder. “Back. Off,” Ray whispered low and threatening at Walt’s father.

“It’s alright, Ray,” Walt said, never moving his eyes from his father. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

Walt took his bag off his shoulder and dropped it to the floor of his room. “Keep it all, I don’t care.” He focused on Nate and Brad, both standing with their arms crossed a few feet behind them. “I’m ready now.”

It wasn’t until Walt shifted forward that he saw his mother in the doorway. He stopped dead in his tracks. She had always been an enigma to him. He knew she hated him, what he is, but he could feel the love in her that she could never stamp out; the love a mother has for her son. Walt walked towards her slowly.

“I’m leaving,” he said to her. Walt stood there waiting, praying that she would hug him, kiss his cheek, anything. But none of that happened. He felt deflated. Squeezing the key chain in his pocket, he took it out and laid it on the top of his dresser.

She nodded, her chest rattling slightly. He reached out to her, wanting to hug her goodbye because even though she has never openly loved him, he knew she still cared somewhere deep inside of her. His fingers had only grazed her arm when she recoiled, her whole countenance shifting. “Don’t,” was all she said, full of disgust.

Walt’s arm dropped to his side. He felt a hand encase his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Ray stepped in front of him, their hands still touching.

“What is wrong with you?” he asked, confused and angry. “Your son is leaving, you don’t give a shit, and you refuse to show you care. Now move before I move you.”

She looked at her husband who just stared back at her with indifference. Her head was held high as her eyes flicked between all of them. When they arrived once more on Walt she sank back, stepping to the side. Ray grabbed Walt’s hand and pulled him through the door.

He bowed his head, doing his best to hide the tears forming in his eyes.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/00018z4q/)   



	2. Count to Three

_**Count to Three: Part 2**_  
  
 **Title:** Count to Three  
 **Part:** Part 2 Nate, Brad  
 **Author:** [](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/profile)[**l_s_d_me**](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/)  
 **Pairing:** Brad/Nate; Ray and Walt

Nate looked at each one of his men. Sitting on the floor of a dingy hotel room they all looked stronger than they had before. Nate was positive that the four of them being together, accepting their fate as it had claimed them, had altered their chemistry. All of them becoming more solid with each passing hour.

They had ordered pizza because according to Ray, “pizza is timeless, dude.” And it turned out it was. The four of them sat in a circle around a coffee table eating, talking about everything but nothing of importance. “I thought the future was going to be different,” Ray said. “Like chicks in silver bikinis flying around in cars that run on trash or somethin’. This looks just like my time only with a lot more plaid.”

“Don’t worry Ray,” Brad chimed in. “I live in a house that hovers. It’s staffed with robots that serve me food which appears out of thin air.”

“It’s true,” Nate said, backing Brad up.

Ray’s eyes went wide and his mouth dropped open. Nate could see a whole slice of pizza chewed up in there. Walt just sat there watching it all with a bemused look on his face.

“Really?!” Ray spat food everywhere. “Can we go there?! Are we going there next?!” He was practically bouncing up and down on his heels.

“Ray,” Walt said from beside him. “They’re joking with you.”

Nate looked at Brad, both of them shrugging simultaneously before taking a drink from their beer. Ray appropriately sulked in his spot for about thirty seconds before grabbing another piece of pizza and turning to Walt.

“Walt, Walt! Who am I?” He held the piece of pizza up to his face to take an exaggerated bite, but instead he yelled “cowabunga, dude!”

Walt’s face lit up as he sang out, “heroes in a half shell.” Before both of them yelled “Turtle Power!” and high-fived.

They both collapsed into laughing on the floor.

Nate was looking at them with fondness, glad that they had so much in common. He noticed Brad looking at him out of the corner of his eye and that warm feeling, that feeling of home washed over him. He made sure to stamp it back down before looking to acknowledge Brad.

When their eyes met, Brad raised an eyebrow at him and nodded once towards Ray and Walt. “They’re going to save the world?” he asked quietly, a smile floating on his voice.

Nate leaned back against the couch next to Brad, both of their legs straight out in front of them, their thighs nearly touching. “Even Heracles had his faults, Brad.”

Brad rolled his eyes. “You’re worse than they are, Nate.”

“Yeah, okay Mr. Can-We-Take-My-Bike-Back-in-Time-with-us. It’s just a bike”

Nate watched as Brad’s eyes went wide, going dark. He put his hand over Nate’s mouth. “Don’t talk about her like she doesn’t have feelings.” Nate smiled brightly behind Brad’s hand; he knew that Brad would be able to feel it. “Okay?” Brad asked, waiting for Nate’s nod of agreement before removing his hand; his thumb straying a little longer than necessary on Nate’s neck.

Nate waited a beat before coming back at him. “I just don’t see what the big deal is.”

Brad thumped his head back against the couch in exasperation. “That’s it! When we get back there we’re going for a ride and I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

“Fine,” Nate said. “Will I have to….”

“I said not a word,” Brad cut in, leaving them both on the verge of laughter.

Nate acquiesced and went back to his beer, his smile still playing on his lips. He caught Walt’s face, eyes trained in their direction. Nate had to fight against his muscles tensing, knowing that Brad would feel it and wonder what was wrong. How stupid could Nate be? Of course Walt would be able to sense it; the give and take between them, all of it. Nate took a sip of his beer as he forced himself to relax, bending his knees up to rest his hands on them.

“What’s on TV?” he asked.

*

They all fell asleep where they were sitting. Brad and Nate up against the couch, and Walt and Ray lying on their stomach’s facing the television set. There had been some show on about six friends who did nothing but hang out in a coffee shop and sleep with people. Ray had made them stop there when he swore one of the main characters was the girl from a Bruce Springsteen video. And then they all laughed as he imitated her dancing.

But that was hours ago. For now, they slept.

The warmth coming off of Brad lulled Nate into a deeper sleep than he had been in years, comforted by the feeling of being surrounded by his brothers. But then a chill crept in, deep inside his chest and up into his mind. He twitched in his sleep, his eyes squeezing tight as he jerked. A voice spoke within him.

“Nate” it whispered. “Give up. You can’t stop me. Nothing can. You’ll fail and they’ll all die.”

“No,” Nate mumbled in his sleep. “No.”

“Yeeeeesssssss,” it hissed unearthly. “I will make you watch as I tear out their hearts."

Nate jerked awake. Brad was still sound asleep beside him; the TV gave off an eerie glow in the pitch darkness of the room. He sat up, running his fingers through his hair he felt his forehead beaded with sweat. When he raised his head he saw them, a pair of eyes glowing at him from the corner of the room.

"Leave," Nate said, staring it down. "Don't fuck with us."

The thing laughed. "You dare speak to me like that?"

"Yes. I dare."

A growl emanated from the corner raising all the hairs on Nate's body. Then, as if in slow motion, it lunged at Nate. He moved to push himself up from the ground only to be knocked back down by Brad, sliding in front of him to grab it. When they collided the air went cold. Ray and Walt startled awake, looking around and trying to figure out what was going on.

"Move!" Nate yelled at them, and immediately they flung themselves closer to him. Each of them looked for the opportunity to help Brad.

"Get them out of here!" Brad yelled, wrestling with it. "Go! Now!"

"Brad! I'm not leaving you here." Nate watched as Brad kicked it in its side, followed by it pinning Brad down by his neck.

Nate looked at the pair to his left, his breath coming in quick pants as his worry over Brad heightened. _We won't be good to anyone dead_ , he thought. "Fine," he said. "Ray, help him," was all Nate said before he grabbed Walt by the arm and disappeared.

The apartment Nate kept in Brad's world was dark and cold when they arrived. Walt gasped for air as Nate helped him down onto the couch. Sometimes it was easy to forget how moving through time can rattle a person. But there wasn't time for that now. "Walt, Walt," he said with urgency. "Get a fire going and stay here. I'll be back." He turned to go, clearing his head as always. "I promise."

Yelling filled the air upon Nate's arrival back in 1996. The television was on its side, the coffee table had been smashed and Ray was sliding down the wall. Brad had somehow managed to get the intruder around the neck, pulling at it from behind. His eyes met Nate's as soon as he appeared back in the room. There was trust and faith there as Nate ran to Ray's side. "Take Brad, Nate," Ray pleaded. "Leave me here to fight him. Brad's more valuable."

"Shut up, Ray," Nate told him as he grasped him around the shoulders with both hands.

The living room was warmer when Nate arrived with Ray. Walt was kneeling by the fire place but jumped to his feel when they were suddenly next to him. "Take me back!" Ray yelled, grabbing Nate by the fabric of his shirt. "Take me back there!"

"Walt," Nate yelled. "Grab him. I have to go for Brad."

Walt thrust himself forward, nearly tackling Ray in the process. They stumbled to the side, Ray reaching for Nate as Walt pressed him further away. Nate made sure both of them were no longer touching him when he went back.

It was like entering a place he had never seen before; the couches were ripped and there was blood on the floor. Nate scanned the room for Brad. It took him but a moment to find his figure working to push himself up on the other side of the bed. The man with the glowing eyes was slumped off to the side, but Nate could see him trying to pull up to his full height.

Nate broke into a run as he threw himself across the bed, sliding down square on top of Brad. _Three_ , he thought as he cleared his mind; _Two_ , and he relaxed his entire body save for the grip he held. Preparing. _One_.

They appeared on the floor of Nate’s apartment, still wrapped around each other and breathing hard. Nate panicked, “Are you alright?” he asked quietly just to Brad and he roamed his hands over Brad’s body checking for injury. He had seen blood in the hotel room, he knew he did. He prayed to anybody listening that Brad wasn't seriously injured; that he wasn't going to bleed out all over his apartment.

Brad was shaking silently below him. "I'm fine Nate, I'm fine...I'm fine," he repeated, grabbing Nate's hands that were still searching for injuries. "Nate, stop," he said softer finally stopping Nate's ministrations. "It's okay now."

Nate breathed out, resting his head on Brad's chest. "Are you sure?' he asked, not rising from his spot. “I saw blood." Brad cupped the back of his neck reassuringly. "It wasn't mine," he told Nate. "I cut it. It wasn't mine. It wasn't mine," he repeated, holding Nate to him.

*

“The legends call it _Viator_.”

Nate sat them all down to explain it all, anything they didn’t understand or hadn’t learned yet. He needed them to know everything he did. They sat in a circle on the floor in front of Nate’s fireplace.

“But that name,” Nate said, “passed into the shadows a millennium ago along with his soul. He’s now known as The Traveler. He moves from world to world, time to time, destroying everything. The Traveler sucks the world into himself like the black hole that he’s become.”

The ka-tet sat there still as night as Nate repeated everything he had told Brad about time flowing like the water cycle, and how they've together to protect the Cradle of Civilization and destroy the Traveler.

“Do you know when The Traveler is from?” Walt asked.

“Many think he’s from the beginning of time; my time, your time, all time,” he answered. “I honestly don’t know. I doubt he even remembers now.”

They faded into silence, each of them lost in their own heads. The four of them sat like that for minutes, hours, Nate didn’t know. But then Ray was speaking to him and they were all rigid with concentration once more.

“Nate,” Ray said, his voice a little confused. “How do you know all this?”

Nate knew this was coming so he steeled himself. “He killed my father.”

“How?” It was Brad asking now, and he was somehow imperceptibly closer to Nate than he had been a moment before.

“He ripped his heart out through his chest.” Nate’s voice was emotionless as he spoke, burying it all deep down, pushed sharply to the side and hidden behind his stomach.

“Why?” was whispered into the circle. Nate didn’t know who said it, but it didn’t matter.

He reached to his side where he had left a small bundle wrapped in an old dish towel that looked to be from a country kitchen. Nate set the bundle in the middle of them all and slowly went about untying it. He splayed the cloth out, each corner as straight as possible. Finally he moved back revealing two rosewood gripped revolvers shining in the light of the fire.

“For these,” was all he said.

Brad’s hand reached out, hovering over one of the pair. He didn’t touch it; he just left his hand there, feeling whatever energy was coming off of them. But Nate knew that the one Brad had used to shoot the Shadow was calling to him; that they were now bound together.

“Yes,” Nate said to him, letting Brad know that whatever he was feeling was true and not a trick his mind was playing on him.

Brad closed his eyes and let his hand drop, fingers curling around the grip. His voice spoke as if from a trance: “I do not aim with my hand; He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye.”

Nate's hand grasped the untouched gun lying in front of him before speaking. "I do not shoot with my hand;  
He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind."

They stared at each other as the final idiom spilled from their lips in unison: "I do not kill with my gun;  
He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart."

"Well," Ray said, breaking their spell. "Aren't you two all moto."

“These are powerful, Ray,” Nate told him, setting his down and taking Brad’s from his hand before wrapping them once again. “I followed nothing more than whispers in the dark to find these,” his eyes burning into each of them. “The pair is older than any of our worlds and is the only true weapon we have against the things that are sure to hunt us now that we’ve set our destiny in motion.”

“But if those are the only way then why are we here?” Walt asked from beside him, suddenly looking defeated. Nate saw the look of self-doubt creep back in for the first time since they had left Walt's time.

“You’re here; you’re _all_ here because we’re stronger together than any of us are apart. We were all born for this,” Nate said as he tapped his chest. They looked at him skeptically. Nate could see the disbelief on their faces, not believing in themselves even though Nate believed in them so wholly. He sighed and looked at them one by one.

“Brad, you were born to be a machine on the battle field. You could shoot something 200 yards away using nothing but your eyes for sight. You could see me running and shoot me straight through the heart if you needed too. And Ray, you know things none of us could even dream of understanding, and that’s more valuable than anything. And Walt here,” Nate said, reaching to put his hand on Walt’s shoulder. “Walt is special. Along with his great capacity for knowledge, he will make each and every one of us better than before. You can sense true natures and bring them out, can’t you?” Walt nodded slowly.

Brad was the first to speak. “What do we do now? Where will we go?”

Nate was glad for the change of subject. It’d be much easier to show than tell them what they each have buried inside.

“We’re staying here in your time, Brad,” he said. “I’m going to train all of you, both individually and collectively. Then, when it’s time, we’re going to strike out and hell better hope to steer clear of us.”

***

Brad awoke from a dream as he had every night for the past three weeks. In this one they were running through the desert with a red cloud on their heels. Ray fell, his boot getting caught on a root that shouldn’t have been there. Nate reached down and pulled him to his feet in one quick movement, quicker than any human should have been able to do. Brad knew in his dream that none of them could out run this forever; nothing can be out run forever. The ground ahead of them was a drop off. They would have to jump and hope that they wouldn’t die from the fall. He awoke when they pushed off into nothingness.

His dreams always ended like that, a fact that unnerved Brad to no end. Always falling and never getting the upper hand, life at its best apparently.

The room was dark as Brad sat up, his toes digging into the plush carpet. A little over a month before Nate had moved them all into a house together. Brad was familiar with the area they were in; he had been through there a lot, but never noticed the house before. It sat close enough to town where they could get anything they needed at a moments notice, but far enough away so that if something attacked them innocent bystanders wouldn’t be killed. It was a two-story house. The downstairs had all the usual things, a kitchen, living room, bathroom, library, and two bedrooms that Nate and Brad occupied. Upstairs held Ray and Walt’s rooms, another bathroom, and a couple offices. Ray had told Brad when they first got there that he felt like he was living at a hotel now. Brad just felt like he finally had a home again after leaving his so many years before. But he kept that to himself.

Brad stood, stretching his arms above his head. He could feel his bones and muscles expanding and contracting as he worked them. The change to his body was subtle. He felt stronger, more in control of himself, but his appearance wasn’t noticeably altered; not like the others. Ray and Walt had been affected by the training the most. Their bodies were filling out and they looked surer of themselves than ever before. Brad still noticed a tremor in Ray’s hands from time to time as sweat suddenly sprung up along his brow; but he said nothing. There was only so much he could do for someone who didn’t want to change.

The clock on Brad’s bedside table read 5:30 a.m., an hour and a half before he and Nate were to start their usual training. Brad looked around his room, aimlessly pulling on a pair of pajama bottoms before stepping out into the hall, shutting his dreams away.

The kitchen was dark as he made coffee. Brad shivered with warmth as the first sip he took spread throughout his body. In some ways this was always his favorite part of the day; silence, darkness, and a cup of coffee. He walked through the living room, the carpet silencing his footsteps as he crept along. When he pushed open the door to the library there was a faint glow coming from the fireplace still. Brad looked at the books lining the walls, searching for a book Nate had told Brad he thought he should read, _The Drawing of Three_. Nate had explained that it was one of the old legends surrounding ka-tets, people bound by fate. Brad moved next to the fireplace; finding it stuck on top of a stack of books that looked older than anything Brad had ever seen. He held it gingerly, letting his fingers brush over the worn cover as he turned it in his hands.

A sound caught Brad’s attention from behind. He turned his head to see Nate sleeping in the oversized armchair facing the fire. It struck him how different Nate looked asleep. His face seemed years younger, it was easy to forget that Nate looked younger with his eyes closed; those eyes that looked hundreds of years old.

Brad moved to wake him thinking that Nate should at least get an hour of sleep in his bed and not in a chair. He knelt down so as not to startle Nate and put his hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently. “Nate,” he whispered into the space between then. Nate mumbled something under his breath, still very much asleep, before shifting toward Brad and sliding his own hand up Brad’s arm. Brad froze as he stared at Nate, the feel of his hand sliding up into his hair made him close his eyes. “Brad,” Nate whispered with a soft breath. “Come here.” Brad didn’t hesitate even though it felt wrong to do this while he knew Nate was sleeping. But Nate was warm beneath his hand, and the want in Nate’s voice sunk right to his stomach. Brad leaned forward until their lips met. Nate made a contented sound as he moved his mouth against Brad’s.

As far as kisses go it was chaste, a press and lingering feel of lips against one another. But as Nate released Brad’s neck, smiled, and fell back into his slumber, Brad could feel it everywhere. It burned through him. He straightened up and looked down at Nate. Brad was in trouble and he knew it. Picking up his book and coffee cup, Brad made his way out of the library to somewhere safer, away from Nate’s sleeping form and the memory of the touch of his lips.

An hour later Brad had no idea what the book was about. But he did know that he would go crazy if he didn’t get the opportunity to kiss Nate Fick until they were both breathless. He could picture it in his head. He would back Nate up against the wall of the library; Nate would let his mouth drop open, his tongue sliding out to wet his bottom lip. Brad would watch his tongue knowing that in a few moments it would be his. Then Brad would slide up against Nate, picking him up just enough off the floor so Nate would only be comfortable with his legs hooked around Brad’s hips. They would both gasp as they slammed against the bookshelf before their mouths closed on one another. Brad could already feel the sensation of Nate’s tongue gliding along his, and the way Nate would helplessly thrust his hips forward against Brad. Brad’s hands would fall to Nate’s ass, cradling him in such a way that they would be lined up perfectly. He envisioned the noises Nate would make as he sucked on his neck, a scrape of his teeth followed by his tongue, causing Nate to writhe in his arms. The way Nate would grab his hair and pull his mouth back to his own, their tongues dancing an endless waltz together until neither of them could take it anymore. Brad could feel it all.

A knock on his door brought his mind back to the present. “Yes?” he said, folding the book onto his lap.

Nate popped his head in, smiling. “Morning, Brad.”

Brad had to work to keep his face from flushing. “Nate,” he said with a nod. “Sleep well?”

“Yes. It was very…peaceful,” he said, a small smile breaking on his lips. Those lips.

“So,” Brad said, “What do you have in store for me today?”

Nate smiled a wicked smile before shrugging. “You’ll just have to wait and see. Meet me in the kitchen in twenty,” he said before closing the door behind him.

Brad exhaled hard. He set the book on his table, closed his eyes, and let his hand drift underneath the sheet.

*

By the time Brad got down to the kitchen Nate and Walt were sitting at the table eating breakfast. Nate's hair was a little damp like he had just gotten out of the shower, a thought that Brad did not need to dwell on.

"Morning Brad," Walt said with a mouthful of toast.

"Hey Walt," he said, pulling out the chair to sit across from Nate. As he reached forward to grab a piece of toast off the plate in the middle of the table Walt moved as well, their hands grazing each other. Brad thought nothing of it, but Walt coughed, choking on his food. He drained his glass of water, looking wide-eyed at Brad. Shit, Brad thought as he tried to remain calm. Walt could feel it, the feelings about Nate bubbling right underneath Brad's surface.

"You okay, Walt?" Nate asked, looking up from the newspaper.

"I'm fine; toast is just a little dry."

Nate looked at him for a few more moments before going back to the story he was reading. Brad and Walt looked at each other, both of them willing information across to the other one without words. Walt was creasing his eyebrows and trying to motion with them and his head toward Nate without it being noticeable, while Brad was shaking his head back and forth praying he didn't say anything out loud.

Nate put the paper down on the table, exhaling. "If you guys are about done playing some bizarre game of charades, me and Brad need to go," he said causing Brad to look more uncomfortable than he's probably ever been and Walt to have another coughing fit. Nate rolled his eyes at them as he stood to put his dishes in the sink. Walt looked from Nate to Brad before smiling. "Good luck," he laughed as he made his way to the library, leaving the two of them alone.

"Shall we?" Nate asked.

*

Each morning Brad and Nate would go out to a stretch of land Nate owned and practice shooting. They used shotguns, pistols, crossbows, and any kind of rifle imaginable; but mostly they focused on the rosewood revolvers. Brad often wondered how Nate found enough hours in the day to do everything as he trained with him in the morning hours, and then worked with Walt and Ray until well into the night sometimes.

Their sessions had started off simple. Nate would set up a row of cans and Brad would shoot them as Nate watched him. He would walk up and adjust Brad’s arm or his grip on the gun and tell him to try again. Nate changed the distance away from his targets every day so Brad wouldn’t get comfortable with them. Still, nine times out of ten Brad would make his target.

He sat silently as Nate drove them out to the range. Nate’s radio played some crap song that Brad tried not to like as they traveled down the dirt road. There wasn’t anything out here other than hills and valleys, not a single house in sight. Nate stopped underneath the Oak he always parked by. Brad had asked him why he always parked in the same exact spot when there’s nothing for miles. Nate had just told him that he liked this tree and left it at that.

As Brad got out of the Jeep, Nate came around the front and threw something small and black at him.

“What’s this?” he asked, holding up the thin piece of fabric.

“A blindfold.”

Brad looked down at it, turning it over in his hands. “This is a little kinky for the range don’t you think, sir?”

Nate rolled his eyes at him before striding out to set up the targets. Brad watched him moving about, contemplating where to place the targets, moving, thinking, moving. He could see his muscles flexing underneath his clothes. Sometimes Brad thought he looked like a leopard.

With the targets in place Nate walked back over to Brad, coming to a stop directly next to him. He began to speak in a low voice.

“Look at each of them, Brad. Memorize what they are: the person, the can, the tire, a bird. Are you doing that?”

“Yes,” Brad answered as his eyes moved over the course laid out in front of him. Each of the four objects was at varying distances away from both him and each other. Two of them looked nearly on top of each other from this angle, but Brad could tell they were probably about thirty yards apart. He closed his eyes, picturing the whole scene in his mind’s eye. Brad took two deep breathes before opening his eyes again, re-evaluating the scene. He felt the weight of the revolver in his hand and envisioned himself hitting each target.

When he knew he could do it he turned to Nate and nodded at him. Nate moved behind him, draping the blindfold over his eyes before tying it securely around his head. “You don’t need your hand to kill, Brad. You don’t aim with your hand,” Nate spoke slowly from behind him.

“I aim with my eye,” Brad answered.

“You don’t need to see Brad, you’ve already seen it. View it in your mind’s eye and shoot. How do you shoot, Brad?”

“I shoot with my mind,” he answered.

“I kill with my heart,” they both said in unison.

Brad breathed out, steeling the gun in his hand. He felt Nate move in front of him, close, impossibly close. “Can you see me?” he said, his breath ghosting over Brad’s face.

“No, but I can feel you,” he said.

“I should hope so,” Nate joked as he stepped back. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Brad brought everything back to the front of his mind; it was as if he had his eyes open. He could see it all, the way the targets stood there just waiting for him to acknowledge their presence. He widened his stance, before raising the gun.

The shots rang out into the morning, cutting off the robin’s song. Shoot, adjust, shoot, shoot, drop down, shoot.

He stood tearing off his blindfold and froze on the spot, the black fabric falling from his hand. Nate stood dead center of the targets, watching Brad like he was at a baseball game. His hands were resting on his hips as he looked at him, smiling and nodding. Brad stalked towards him.

“What the fuck are you doing, Nate?!” He yelled. “I could have shot you!”

“But you didn’t.”

“But what if I had!” Brad was angry; angrier than he’d been in a long time.

“Well,” Nate said, moving his arms as if it didn’t matter. “I would have called Doc Bryan to come patch me up and we would’ve tried again a different day.”

“This isn’t funny, Nate.” Brad’s face was getting red, he could feel it. He stood there only a couple feet away from Nate. He wanted to punch him, push him to the ground, or kiss him. He didn’t know which and it was making him even redder.

“Brad,” Nate said. “You had to do this. If I had told you I was out here would you have shot?”

“NO!” Brad yelled.

“Stop yelling Brad,” Nate ordered him, his voice dropping. “Both of us had to know that you could hit anything no matter what was in your way…whether you knew it was there or not. This is only the beginning, Brad. If you can’t handle this….”

“But…”

“No buts. Okay?”

Silence.

“Okay, Brad?” Nate said more forceful.

“Okay,” Brad finally said, doing his damndest to stamp down his emotions.

Nate’s hand reached out, grasping Brad on the arm. “It’s okay to be mad. But learn to use it; you can’t let it control you.”

Brad closed his eyes, forcing his breathing to go back down to normal. He understood why Nate had done it, but that didn’t stamp out the worry he felt. He didn’t know what he would’ve done if he had missed and killed Nate. Brad couldn’t fathom having to tell Ray and Walt, or having to go back to his old life. When he opened his eyes again he was calm, the storm he knew had been in his eyes was gone. Nate smiled his small crooked smile at him before bending down to pick up a small box of rocks he had hidden behind the tire.

“Now,” he said as he threw one of them up into the air. “Shoot.”

*

Four hours later they were headed back and Brad was still frustrated with Nate, and he could sense Nate’s ever growing annoyance with him for not letting this go.

Nate sighed as he turned off the car in front of their house. “Are you going to be mad at me all day?”

Brad couldn’t help but smile at the way he said it. He turned his head toward Nate, arching an eyebrow. “If you’re going to keep pulling stunts like that I am.” Brad knew he had no real reason to be angry still, but real reasons didn’t matter to him at the moment. The idea that Nate would place himself in harm’s way like that was what was gnawing at his insides. That he could’ve inadvertently killed him was not something he would easily forget.

“You’re impossible,” Nate told him as they entered the front door.

The smell of lunch made Brad realize that he hadn’t eaten anything except for a bite of toast hours before. In the kitchen, they found Ray making spaghetti and garlic bread. Sauce was everywhere, but it smelled so delicious that Brad didn’t care how much of a mess he had to look at while eating.

“Hey,” Ray said as they walked in, plopping down in the chairs. “I hope you don’t mind. I got hungry and this was all we had, so deal with it, we’re having spaghetti for lunch.”

“No one’s complaining, Ray.” Nate smiled at him with a shake of his head. “Though you are going to have to clean the sauce off the ceiling when we’re done.”

Brad looked up noticing red blotches randomly sprinkling the ceiling. “How did you…?” he started but was cut off by Walt as he walked up behind them.

“Whoa,” he said, grasping the backs of both Brad and Nate’s chairs. “Have a bad session today, Brad?” he said with a wink. “It’s not quite the love fest it was this morning,” he said, stopping suddenly when they all looked at him.

Brad wanted to kill him.

“So…,” Walt tried to backtrack. “I’m just going to start keeping more things to myself.” He went to the stove and started stirring the noodles, pointedly not looking at anybody.

Brad glanced at Nate, a bizarre expression resting in his eyes, like a dream. Right then Brad wanted to tell him, wanted him to understand why he was acting like this, but he couldn’t. Nate’s eyes met his with a tilt of his head and Brad could swear he saw it all there between them.

Naturally Ray chose that moment to begin singing at the top of his lungs as he set the bread on the table. A blush rose on Nate’s cheeks as he cast his eyes down. Brad felt the urge to reach his hand out, but he couldn’t. He chose instead to slide down in his chair and let his foot hit Nate’s. When their eyes met this time it was different, as if they each knew something about the other that they had only assumed before.

“Dig in,” Ray said, sitting down next to Brad and plopping a heaping pile of spaghetti onto his plate.

Brad turned his attention to his food, never moving his foot.

*

After, when Nate and Walt had retired to the library, Brad found himself standing on a chair wiping red sauce from the ceiling fan. Ray had tried to get it, but even standing on the table he couldn’t reach.

“Why don’t you just admit you’re hot for teacher,” Ray said from below. He was sitting on the table at Brad’s feet watching him work.

“Shut up, Ray.”

“No seriously, dude. I’m not judging you. I saw him swimming the other day and almost got a halfie. I swear. I’d go gay for him faster than if Rob Lowe was standing there naked eating a steak.”

Brad stopped what he was doing and squatted down. “That doesn’t make any sense. Were you dropped on your head as a child?”

Ray just beamed at him, picking up a handful of plain noodles and shoving them in his mouth.

*

A few days later things went back to normal. All of them in their regular training schedules, _becoming warriors_ as Nate put it. And Brad, he had to admit, was starting to get bored. He needed a change of scenery, something new to challenge him; and something, anything, to take his mind off Nate. And then it hit him: the test. Nate had told him that he had passed some sort of challenge and would be starting something new. But why hadn’t he yet? If Brad had it his way they would go out into this spot in the desert he knew and work out there. The desert had always called to Brad like nothing else ever had. It was vast and bright and like nothing Brad could have fathomed if he hadn’t seen it himself.

But then, why couldn’t Brad make a decision for his training. He stood from his chair, determined to get this done. It was nearly 11:30 p.m., but he knew Nate would be up. It took him only seconds to get from his room to Nate’s. The door was closed, but Brad could see the light coming out from underneath it.

“Nate,” he said as he knocked and entered; not waiting for an answer.

 _Fuck._

Nate was sitting on the bed, naked, his legs open in front of him. Walt was kneeling there, his mouth snug around him, moving up and down, groaning as he took in more and more of Nate. Brad couldn’t help but palm himself through his pants. _Goddamn_ , he thought. Nate looked up at him with half lidded eyes and smiled. “Care to join us Brad?”

He took a step forward, his hand now finding its way underneath the band of his pants. Walt raised his head with an obscene pop. “Yeah Brad, come train with us. We’re training _real hard_.”

Brad shot up in his bed, his breath coming fast. "Shit," he said out loud as he fell back down onto his pillow. Brad laid there praying for his dreams about falling into the deep unknown abyss to come back, anything other than what was just happening in his subconscious. He closed his eyes and breathed in and out slowly, reaching for his glass of water. Empty. Brad glared at the glass before he threw off his covers.

The hallway was cold as he quietly padded toward the kitchen.

The water felt cool as it poured down his throat, chilling the heat that had been burning in him. He refilled his glass, turning back when he noticed the light on underneath Nate's door. Brad froze, his knuckles white around his water. He walked up to the frame, took a breath, and knocked.

"Yes?" Nate called from inside.

Brad pushed the door open slowly, and peeking his head in just a crack. He was glad he had a glass of water because his mouth went dry at the sight of Nate.

Nate was sitting cross legged on his bed. He was wearing a pair of black sweatpants, no shirt, glasses, and had one of the revolvers dismantled on a towel in front of him. He watched Brad as his fingers, dirty and slick from working the gun, moved expertly over the pieces. Nate motioned Brad in.

"Can't sleep?" Nate asked.

Brad shook his head back and forth, not trusting the things that might come out of his mouth.

"I don't sleep much either," Nate said, letting the weariness show. "There's too much to do, and I just want to make sure everyone is prepared."

Brad sat down at the foot of his bed, careful not to disturb the carefully laid out pieces. "It'll be fine. We'll be fine, Nate."

Nate bit at his lip, fixing Brad with a look he couldn't define before pushing up his glasses and looking back at what he held in his hands. "Was there something you needed?"

There wasn't, but Brad didn't want to tell him that. He was curious about the training though, so he went with that.

"I was thinking maybe we could train somewhere different? Maybe out in the desert."

The green eyes that were looking at him calmly twitched, his head tilting. "Does the desert call to you? Like how the seas call to world travelers?"

"Like a bright and vast unknown that holds my life," Brad told him in a hushed voice, scooting back against the wall so that he was sitting propped up next to Nate.

"It's all inside of you Brad," Nate said. "I bet you could fly if you wanted to."

Brad smiled at that; a small private smile that was only fit for late night hours.

"Do you have an idea of where you'd like to go?" Nate asked as he slipped the final pieces of the weapon back together, quietly praising its beauty underneath his breath.

"Yeah, it's about eighty miles out of town," Brad said. "Heading east."

Nate nodded before going up on his knees. He placed a hand on Brad's thigh as he leaned over and grabbed a map book off of the floor. Brad could feel the heat from his hand burn through his pajama bottoms; his hand print burned there forever. His muscles tensed and he felt his breath catch. Nate sat back, his hand sliding up a couple inches higher as he settled back down, a smile playing on his lips.

"Show me."

*

Twenty minutes on the road had Brad thinking this wasn’t the greatest idea he’d ever had.

Nate held on to him on the back of his bike as they sped out into the desert. Brad reveled in the feel of Nate wrapped around the back of his body – reminding him of the feel of Nate on top of him after the earlier attack. He felt the way Nate’s hands tightened and released along his torso, and how he pressed himself further against him. Brad let himself lean back into Nate a little – giving in even though he knew he shouldn’t get involved, not when his world was at stake.

They stopped an hour and a half later with nothing around them but open space and fresh air. Brad didn't have much planned other than shooting exercises, and maybe some hand to hand combat. So that's what they did.

Brad shot in different scenarios - with Nate standing directly in front of him, with a blindfold again, lying down, squatting down on his haunches, running, diving, anything and everything the two of them could think of. And it was fun.

Both of them were leaning against Brad's bike when Nate asked Brad what they were going to do now.

"Hand to hand," Brad told him without missing a beat.

"Okay," Nate said as he pushed off the bike stretching a little. "Catch me."

Nate took off running at full speed and all Brad could do was stand there for a minute surprised at his reaction. Brad could feel his smile growing as he kicked off after him. The only problem was that Nate was fast and really fucking good at suddenly changing directions. It took Brad longer than he would have liked to finally catch him, and when he did he tackled him to the ground.

They fought, both of them trying to get the upper hand on the other. It went on and on without hesitation or worrying about being too close or holding on for too long. If Brad had him in a hold and smiled down at him for a little too long, or if he wondered whether or not the grunt Nate made when his back his the ground was anything similar to what he might sound like during sex, nobody was there to know.

The two of them stood side-by-side in the grass afterward, each trying to catch their breath.

Brad was staring at Nate, their faces flushed. He liked Nate like this, relaxed, smiling, open. He thought about those early days parked out underneath the tree by their house; both of them staying an easy distance away from one another.

“Why do you like trees so much?” Brad asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

Nate kept his eyes trained on Brad, un-phased by the odd change of subject. “They’re a rarity where I’m from.”

And with that an idea sprung into Brad’s head. He suddenly began picking up everything of theirs that lay strewn around on the ground. Nate watched him toss everything into his backpack before walking behind him and sliding it onto Nate's shoulders. The weight of it pulled at the top of Nate’s shirt revealing a pale strip of neck. But Nate remained where he was as a helmet was tossed his way.

“Let’s go, Fick,” Brad said, settling down onto his bike.

“And where are we going?” Nate asked as he slid the helmet onto his head, showing no signs of putting up a fight with this change of plan.

“You’ll see.”

This time when Nate climbed on the bike he was closer; not just his hands and arms touching, but his whole body. The space between his legs filled with Brad so that nothing but fabric and the smallest amounts of air remained. With the start of the engine, the bike rumbled and vibrated underneath them, and Brad could feel Nate’s hips shift forward. He let his eyes close, taking a deep breath before lifting his feet and pulling back out onto the road.

Neither of them tried to speak to the other as they rode. The bike sailed through the desert until the sand turned to dirt, and the dirt turned to grass. It went on until they were stopped underneath the oldest tree Brad had ever seen. He remembered passing by it years ago; the sheer girth of it frightened him. The secrets and stories it was sure to hold practically radiated out like rays of the sun. But Nate, Nate showed no fear. He stopped next to Brad, staring in awe at the leaves, some of them as big as his head.

They stood there and watched the light dance through the leaves as the wind blew the branches. Brad was transfixed by Nate as he circled it, his hand running along the bark. His eyes matched the green of the leaves, making him appear as if he had always been there underneath that tree, waiting for someone to come. Brad stepped closer, drawn in.

"Thank you," Nate whispered as he rested a hand upon the tree, staring up into the sky.

Brad moved even closer, raising his hand slowly and resting it at Nate's hip. "You're welcome, Nate."

In the end that was all it took.

Nate leaned back against him and breathed deep. Brad moved his hand further around until it was resting on Nate’s stomach, doing nothing more than holding them together. He watched Nate's chest move up and down as he took in air, trapping it for a moment in his chest. A breath that was exhaled as he leaned his head back against Brad's shoulder let all the tension out of his body. "Nate," Brad breathed out, seeing the ruff of Nate's hair flutter from his breath.

The movement was felt along Brad's palm before he saw Nate turning; his t-shirt rucking up where Brad's hand had trailed around him. The air between them was thick as Brad brought both hands to Nate's waist, holding him there. Nate's tongue swiped along his bottom lip a second before his hands tentatively came to rest on Brad's arms, grasping at the shirt there. Then closer. Their foreheads touched as they backed toward the tree; two feet away, one foot away, and then Nate's back was pressed against the trunk and Brad was against him. They didn't speak, they didn't kiss, they simply stood there pressed to one another. Brad let his mouth ghost over Nate's and along his cheek as he slipped a hand underneath the back of Nate's shirt. The burn of skin against skin made Brad push them harder against the tree. When Nate grabbed the back of Brad's neck and shifted his hips forward, nothing else mattered anymore. Their breath shuddered as Nate led Brad's mouth back to his own, yet they still didn't kiss. They closed their eyes, breathing each other’s air.

*

Night fell as Brad drove them back to civilization. He felt so sure in that moment that what he was doing was right; what they were all doing was right.

Nothing cleared Brad’s head like his bike and the night air. But Nate Fick plastered to the back of him was another thing entirely.

He turned left towards town, stopping at a bar on the outskirts.

"I've got too much desert in my mouth," Brad said as he climbed off the bike.

The bar was quiet and nearly deserted when they entered. There was a couple kissing in the corner. Brad watched them as the man's hand stroked up her thigh. His mind flashed to not two hours before when he had been so close to Nate; touching him like he had wanted to for weeks. Nate was still warm beside him as they made their way further in.

"Brad," the bartender smiled. "Haven't seen you 'round in a good while. Whatcha been up to?"

Both Brad and Nate slid onto seats at the bar, their legs grazing as they settled.

"Just traveling like always," Brad told him nonchalantly as he ordered two glasses of whiskey.

They sat there quietly with their drinks, neither of them speaking or really looking at the other. That's not to say there wasn't a thousand volts of electricity shooting between them. Brad thought that maybe he was on fire from just sitting next to the man.

"I thought I told you to think twice before coming back here," a voice sounded from the right.

Craig, Brad thought with an annoyed sigh as he finished his drink.

"I did think twice," Brad said, turning just his head to look at him. "But good whiskey always wins out over assholes."

An elbow in his side let Brad know that Nate was still there, probably disapproving. Brad sighed, swiveling to face Craig. He looked different to Brad now, shallower.

"We just stopped for a drink, Craig," Brad said calmly.

"We?" Craig asked, not noticing Nate hidden beside him.

Nate leaned back in his seat, nodding at Craig, whose eyes narrowed at the site of him. Craig twitched, his eyes growing wide as he stared back at Nate.

"You," Craig growled, pointing at Nate. "You took something from me."

Brad turned to Nate seeing nothing but a cold mask on his face. "Nate?" he asked quietly, but was ignored.

"They weren't yours to begin with," Nate said, his voice clipped.

The twitching coming from Craig was intensifying, as his bones cracked. Brad stood and moved back so he was standing next to Nate, still sitting defiantly on the stool. Nate never broke eye contact as he whispered "ostendo sum," under his breath. Brad had no idea what it meant, but watched as Craig's skin began to roil as his mouth opened.

Nate finally stood, acknowledging Brad for the first time since this had started. "We're going to have to run," he whispered as a loud cracking noise broke echoing around them. Brad watched with a mixture of horror and amazement as Craig's body peeled away from itself. His mouth looked unhinged like that of a great snake, his skin and muscles oozing down to the ground as a black fog expelled from its encasing.

 _A Shadow._

He felt Nate grab his arm and that was it. They turned just as the final crack of his spine sounded and the room went dark. Brad knew that Nate would be right there beside him as he tore out of the building and down the road. The night was dead silent save for the sound of their feet hitting the ground and the whoosh of the air around them as the Shadow lost and gained ground on them. _Fuck_ , Brad thought as the distance between them began to close at a steadier rate.

"Water," Nate yelled as they turned down a side street. "We need to get in some water."

Brad's eyes scanned the area. He knew there was a pool near here, but where? Letting everything go he focused his mind and suddenly he knew exactly where they need to go.

"A left, straight for two blocks, and a right," Brad whispered hurriedly as the air grew colder around them. Their breath was coming faster and faster as they ran; nothing in their way, but death at their heels.

"There!" Brad yelled when they turned.

The pool was half covered with a hardcover, but was still filled with water. Brad could see it shining in the moonlight. Their pace quickened as they hopped the fence, covering the final meter before plunging into the icy water. Brad felt as if all his senses disappeared in that moment, he knew nothing and no one until he felt Nate's hand grabbing his arm and tugging him underneath the cover. The muffled cry of the Shadow met his ears just as his head rose above the water level. Still, he could see nothing.

"Brad," Nate's voice was close. "Are you okay?"

He was, but that wasn't what mattered at the moment.

"What the fuck was that, Nate?!" he struggled to keep his voice down. "Craig-fucking-Schwetji just turned into a Shadow that you apparently stole something from. Jesus Christ, I’ve known him for years." He gargled as he sunk in the water. When he reached out to grab the side of the pool his body pulled flush against Nate's, who was apparently directly in front of him.

"Brad," Nate said slowly as Brad's voice rose. "You need to calm down."

Just then a loud thud hit the cover - it was trying to get them from above. Brad closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them he could see clearer, his eyes finally adjusting to the dark. His eyes fixed directly on Nate's, their green seeming even brighter at night the way they always did.

“He’s the one who was guarding the rosewood revolvers,” Nate told him quietly.

Brad’s hand instinctively went to his side where the gun was kept most days. This whole situation was turning out to be a more tangled web than he knew. Nate explained to him that most likely Craig had been waiting, watching to see if Brad would ever begin down the path his destiny held. And then when he showed up with Nate, a man who took something invaluable from him, confirmed everything he had been waiting for. “ _Ostendo sum_ makes them show themselves,” Nate said as he finished speaking. “It sort of reveals their true selves.”

“But why are we in a pool?” Brad asked.

"We're in the pool," Nate started, "because they hate water and there was no way we'd out run it."

Brad started to object.

"Not even on your bike," Nate finished, a smile tugging at his lips.

"So what do we do now?" Brad asked as he firmed his grip on the poolside behind Nate.

"We wait."

An hour later there wasn't a sound to be heard. Nothing touched their ears but the lapping of the water against the wall mingled with the steady sound of their breaths. They had both relaxed, their bodies swaying closer and further with the movement of the water. It was hypnotizing. Brad watched as Nate's eyes would close for minutes at a time, his breathing would slow. It was times like these that made Nate seem even more of a puzzle to him.

"Why are you doing this?" Brad asked, speaking for the first time in at least forty-five minutes.

Nate looked at him with something akin to sadness in his eyes. "If I don't, this will end. You will end. You'd already be gone... you all would."

Brad let the water push him up against Nate, their sodden clothes attempting to anchor them down to the bottom. He grasped Nate's side with his hand, holding him firmly.

"Thank you," was all he said as he moved forward and slowly pressed his lips against Nate's. His lips were colder than they were the last time they had met in the library - but nothing compared to having Nate awake and his mouth pliant under his own. Brad pressed them up against the side of the pool, holding the bottom of the ladder with both his hands as he trapped Nate between himself and the edge.

Without hesitating Nate turned his head and deepened the kiss, his hands snaking up to grab the back of Brad's head. Brad heard himself groan audibly as he slid his tongue along Nate's; the two of them kissing slowly, exploring, learning each other. "Brad," Nate whispered as he pulled his legs up, wrapping them around Brad's hips. The sensation made him shake. He could feel Nate's entire body against his, the hard lines of his muscles pressing and playing against Brad's own. Their kiss intensified as Nate bit at Brad's bottom lip, tugging it through his teeth. Their hips flexed against each other simultaneously, both of them tightening their hold on one another.

They stayed like that, kissing, thrusting against each other through their soaking wet clothes, trapped in pitch darkness together. Brad felt it when Nate came, his breath caught and Brad moved to lick down the line of his neck, tasting the chlorine there. It wasn't until Nate laid his head on Brad's shoulder and whispered, "Let go, Brad," that he allowed himself to release, biting down on Nate's shoulder.

*

Eventually they left the pool, dragging their weighed down bodies back to Brad's bike. And for a few moments life wasn't as complicated.

But a few moments are all a person can get in life, for as they pulled up to the house the sound of Ray screaming broke any peace there was.

  
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](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/0001b9k9/)   



	3. Count to Three

_**Count to Three: Part 3**_  
  
 **Title:** Count to Three  
 **Part:** Part 3 Ray  
 **Author:** [](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/profile)[**l_s_d_me**](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/)  
 **Pairing:** Brad/Nate; Ray and Walt

Ray inhaled sharply as it entered him, tearing through his blood and sucking at the oxygen. He felt the burn turn to bliss as he slumped back against his bedroom door. The wood cooled his flushed skin as his slid down to the floor. He sealed the small bag of white powder before tossing it into his closet. It landed directly in a shoe making him smile, looking smug for a moment before the regret set in. Ray wanted to be someone new, someone whose life didn’t involve this shit.

He tried to stop, a day here, two days there, but then the withdrawal would start to kick in and he couldn’t handle it. It was harder now with the guys around; he knew they could see it. Brad gave him nothing more than a look, like he was trying to freeze the part of Ray’s composition that needed drugs. Ray tried to make light of it by calling him Iceman, but it scared him to know that they could see through him. He always found comfort in Nate, no judgment on the surface, and seemingly none beneath; just a hand on the shoulder, a squeeze to know that it would all be alright. None of it became complicated until Walt got involved. Ray didn’t know how he did it, but he seemed to know everything – how Ray was feeling, and sometimes what was causing him to feel that way. He could see how some might find it unnerving, but it made things easier for him knowing that this was one person he wouldn’t have to struggle with. They could just be.

All in all, Ray found solace in the life he was living. He and Walt spent the morning hours, after Brad and Nate left to train, doing little things together like running, practicing hand to hand combat, sometimes shooting crossbows in the backyard. No pressure. And when Ray would start to shake or sweat would break out across his upper lip, Walt would put an arm around his shoulders and squeeze. “We’ll manage,” he would say, and it always helped.

But Walt wasn’t always there. And in the grey hours of the morning Ray couldn’t help but let the darkness take over. He could hear his father’s voice ringing in his head, telling him how useless he was. Often it was enough to make him curl up into himself. Sometimes Nate’s words would sneak in through the cracks: " _You're more than you think you are, Ray,_ ” only to be stamped back down by self-doubt. It would wash over him as his shaking hands dug through his drawer for his fix.

On most days Ray’s eyes would water as he got high. He told himself he wasn’t crying, but anyone watching him would have seen the despair on his face and the hatred he felt against himself bubbling to the surface. The days when it was worst he would be jolted back to reality by Walt banging on his bedroom door.

“Hold on a second,” Ray yelled each time, furiously wiping his face and jumping up and down a few times.

He would open the door to find Walt on the verge of tears, a scared look across his face. Sometimes they hugged, sometimes they didn’t, but they always stayed together for a couple hours at least. Walt wouldn’t leave his side, doing his best to keep him occupied; and for the most part it worked. It was just the nights that got him; the nights were the worst.

"I can only do so much for you," Nate told him a month into their training. They were sitting in the library with books and equations spread out in front of them. “You have to want to help yourself,” he said. Even though it was an obvious cliché Ray couldn’t even laugh at it. It was as if suddenly phrases like “Just be the best you, you can be,” were making him think. Still, none of it changed the gnawing he felt deep inside.

He could hide it though. He learned how through years of denial and attitude. And really, for the most part he succeeded.

His physical change in appearance helped; the muscle appearing where it hadn’t before and the weight that now hid the ribs that one could almost make out. They all ate regular meals, a lot of the times together. It was something Ray hadn’t known since he was a child, but more than that, it was new for him not to live off of coffee and coke. He felt stronger and more alive than he had in years. There were moments when confidence filled him and he was proud of himself. These moments usually came when he was working with Nate late into the night, after Ray solved a puzzle, or put together an object that had been a particular challenge.

“What is this?” Ray had said when Nate set down a box of parts in front of him.

“They’re electronic components,” Nate told him. “Put them together.”

That was all he said; not what it was, how many, or any advice on what to do. He just sat down at the table and began to read a book, occasionally looking up to watch Ray.

It took Ray four days to get it right. He worked for hours each day separating and analyzing the parts, laying them each out so as not to miss anything. Without knowing what he was doing he put them together back into perfect working order.

“What the fuck are these?” he asked Nate, holding both of them up in each hand.

“They’re called cell phones,” Nate said, taking one out of Ray’s left hand. “You can make phone calls from almost anywhere with them.”

Ray touched the buttons, accidentally taking a picture of his foot. “When are these from? Walt’s time?”

“No, after that. I got them in 2007 – the height of technology at the time.”

“Can we use them now? Here?” Ray asked as he pressed in his home telephone number.

Nate smiled at him and handed back the phone he held. “I’m afraid not, there aren’t towers here. No signal.”

“Then what are we supposed to do with them?”

Nate just shrugged, “I brought them here to see if you could work with technology you had absolutely no knowledge of. Keep them,” he said, patting Ray on the back. “They’re yours now.”

Ray turned them over in his hands, feeling the mixture of plastic and metal, the weight of them comfortable in his hands. “Thanks,” Ray said, feeling a bizarre sense of wonderment at these devices.

It was that wonder which pushed Ray to do more, to be better. It was his life now.

Sometimes Nate would turn up with something simple like a Rubik’s Cube. And other times he would walk in with a giant box of puzzle pieces, not telling Ray that there were an unknown amount of puzzles in there. Ray thought the worst was when he had to put together five and a half different maps of the Earth from one box.

“You have six hours,” Nate told him before sitting down directly across from him to watch.

And Ray did it. He always did it.

*

It was a Wednesday when Nate brought him the book. It was nearly falling apart at the seams when Ray picked it up off the table from where Nate had laid it down beside him. Nate looked more serious than he had in weeks.

" _Song of Susannah_ ," Ray read the title aloud.

Nate nodded.

"This isn't some book about chick who falls in love, has one of those fucking perfect lives and then suddenly dies from an incurable disease is it?" Ray asked, trying to bring levity to the situation.

"No Ray," Nate said. "It is not."

So much for that.

"Are you going to give me at least a hint?" Ray asked.

"This is important," Nate began explaining. "I need you to read this book closely, cover to cover as many times as you need to in order to find the information we need."

Ray was paying attention now, everything focused on this one book in his hands and the look on Nate's face.

"What are you looking for?"

"Two things," Nate said. "One: there's a coding in there that will tell us the location of the Cradle of Civilization. Two: We need a key to physically enter once we're there. This book describes that key."

He turned the book over in his hands, feeling the old pages, it felt thin to him. "Will it tell me where the key is?"

"No."

"How will we know where to look then once I figure out what it is?" Ray asked.

"Ka will show us," Nate said with finality; always believing that fate will show them the way.

The rest of the night Ray read the book. The first time through he marked nothing, just read. After that he started noting repeated words, cities mentioned, numbers, and odd phrases, anything that stood out. He stayed up all night reading it, and by the time the sun rose an entire notebook was filled from front to back. From his bedroom he could hear Brad and Nate moving around downstairs, as they got ready to go out for Brad's weapons training.

Ray listened for the car to pull away before heading down to the kitchen. He could see Walt sitting at the table chewing on a piece of toast from the stairs so he started running, hitting the linoleum in the kitchen and sliding in.

"Gooooood morning," he said as he slid behind Walt.

"Hey," Walt said with a smile, his face a little red.

"Are you blushing?" Ray laughed as he got coffee and sat down next to him.

"I was just in here with Brad and Nate," Walt began. "You know how they are."

Ray knew. It was obvious to anyone breathing that they wanted each other; and if it was obvious to everyone it was probably killing Walt.

"They should really just blow each other and get it over with," Ray said, scratching his temple.

Walt smiled, “You have such a way with words, Person.”

“Fuck yeah I do. I’m a literary genius, now. Deal with it,” Ray tells him with an exaggerated puff of his chest.

The look Walt gives him is one he sees a million times a day, but it still warms him to see it, to see that there’s at least one person who doesn’t, well, doesn’t hate him, at least not as much as he hates himself most days.

“So, Mr. Literary Genius,” Walt began. “What are you up to? You look like you’ve been up all night.”

He had.

“Nate gave me a book to read that is apparently fucking paramount to the whole fucking situation,” Ray said.

“Paramount?” Walt joked.

Ray leaned forward and points one of his fingers directly in between Walt’s eyes. “Literary. Genius.”

*

The next four hours consisted of nothing but reading and note taking. He thought he might be on to something, at least a general idea of where on earth they might find the Cradle and what the mysterious key is. But then he began to shake and couldn’t sit still for a minute longer. Everything kept leading back to numbers, and it didn't seem right to him. Walt was busy doing something across the room, writing in a notebook of his own and frowning.

Ray doesn’t approve of Walt frowning.

"I'm hungry," he said, scooting back from the table.

Walt looked up at him questioning and went back to reading. "Congratulations."

"Come help me make lunch," Ray said as he walked over to where Walt was sitting. "A big Italian you're-gonna-explode-from-all-the-food lunch."

"You're not Italian," Walt said, still not looking up from his work.

"I know you're not but what am I?" Ray taunted for no reason at all.

"What?" Walt finally looked up.

"What?" Ray said back before walking out of the room.

Ray was pulling noodles, sauce, spices, and bread out of the cabinet when Walt walked in. "I knew you couldn't resist," Ray said with a smile.

"I just don't want you to burn the house down," Walt told him as he seated himself at the table, situated so he could watch Ray cook.

"Aren't you going to help?" Ray said with a sudden pout.

"No."

But he did. They used canned sauce, but added so many different kinds of spices that it tasted completely different than it did to begin with; better than it did. When it got so hot it started boiling with large popping sauce splotches landing everywhere they added the noodles. Ray had insisted they use all the half boxes they had left in the cabinet from previous dinners. He mixed them all in while Walt put together garlic bread that was apparently a secret Hasser specialty; but what looked to Ray like nothing more than melted butter and garlic mixed together and applied generously to the bread before they put it in the oven to crisp.

The sound of Nate's car outside caught Ray's attention as he bent to take the bread out of the oven.

“Hey,” Ray said, picking up the hot pieces of bread and tossing them onto a plate as Nate and Brad walked in, just standing there looking at him. “I hope you don’t mind. I got hungry and this was all we had so deal with it, we’re having spaghetti for lunch.”

“No one’s complaining, Ray.” Nate said, and then let out a small laugh. “Though you are going to have to clean the sauce off the ceiling when we’re done.”

“How did you…?” Brad started but stopped. Ray turned to looked at him with a 'spit it out' expression when he saw Walt swaying a little on the spot, both of his hands holding on to Brad and Nate's chairs.

“Whoa...Have a bad session today, Brad?” Walt said with a wink. “It’s not quite the love fest it was this morning."

Ray nearly choked trying not to laugh. He was going to have to teach that kid to keep some things to himself. Brad looked like he was about to murder Walt, and Ray just couldn't have that. As Walt shuffled away from the table, back over to the stove where it was safer, Ray winked at him before grabbing the bread and began singing at the top of his lunch.

"TAKE ME ONNNNNN, take on me, I'll be gone, in a day or TWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO," he screeched in the highest note he could hit as he set the plate on the table.

Walt glanced at him thankfully while setting the pan of spaghetti down.

“Dig in,” Ray said, sitting down next to Brad and plopping a heaping pile of spaghetti onto his plate.

Lunch was quiet. Both Brad and Nate looked like they were trying so hard not to fuck each other right then and there that Ray thought they might all get pregnant from just being there while they stared at each other. Even Walt was beginning to blush, sensing their overriding feelings. As amusing as it all was to Ray, he was glad when they were finished and Nate and Walt went off to work.

Brad stayed, feet up on an empty chair, hands behind his head, and just watched as Ray climbed up onto a stool and tried to reach the sauce on the ceiling.

Ray had never feared for his life as much as he did at that moment, balancing precariously and cleaning. But of course, he always viewed cleaning as a fate worse than death, so maybe his views were a little skewed. Finally Brad got up.

"Move," he said as he hopped up on the table and started wiping the red off the ceiling.

Ray smiled and plopped down, moving to sit next to Brad's feet. He waited twenty seconds (he had counted) before breaching the subject of Nate.

“Why don’t you just admit you’re hot for daddy,” Ray said, expecting a firm kick.

“Shut up, Ray.”

“No seriously, dude. I’m not judging you. I saw him swimming the other day and almost got a halfie. I swear. I’d go gay for him faster than if Rob Lowe was standing there naked eating a steak.”

Sometimes Ray forgot he wasn't allowed to make references to people Brad had never heard of, but this wasn't one of those times. He was messing with Brad on purpose.

Brad squatted down, “That doesn’t make any sense. Were you dropped on your head as a child?”

Ray just beamed at him, an extra-large and toothy grin to try and hide the fact that he could feel the need for a hit starting to force its way to the surface. He very messily picked up a handful of plain noodles in his shaking hand and shoved them in his mouth. But he knew Brad had seen, he always saw.

*

"Motherfucker," Ray muttered to himself as he tore through his bedside table, though the bottom of his closet, and through every nook and cranny in his room where he ever once hid his stash.

It was all gone. Ray took a deep breath and tried to remember what he had done with it. He knew he had it three days before, the spaghetti day, but he could not remember the days between. Had he taken too much and blacked out, or was he simply working on decoding _Song of Susannah_ the whole time and hadn't taken anything?

None of that mattered now, all he needed to do was find some, and find it fast. He could feel his stomach rolling with every breath he took. The panic set in about ten minutes later when every hiding place was exhausted and his skin began to feel like there was a small fire lit beneath it.

Fuck.

Shit.

Motherfucking shit.

And several more inventive and offensive curses flew through his brain and came out of his mouth before he could stop himself. He didn’t want this; well, he did, but it terrified him to his very core. What if they all let him die? What if Walt and Brad and Nate and everyone else who he’s known band together and throw him out on his own when they see what he’s really got inside of him. What if.

Walt was sitting on the floor outside of his room when he finally came out. When Ray looked down at him and it actually felt like his eyes were starting to sweat along with the rest of his body.

“Walt…,” he said, not able to get past the panicked worry.

Walt just nodded at him, quiet, almost fucking solemn and Ray wanted to punch him. He didn't need to hear it out loud – the admission that Walt snuck in and over a matter of two days took all of Ray’s drugs. He didn't want to hear it, hearing it would hurt.

“Did you take it?” he asked anyway because Ray never knew what was good for him.

“Yes,” was all Walt said before getting up from his seat on the ground and taking a hold of each one of Ray’s wrists. “You can do this; I’ll help you.”

But the worry had already set in. Walt’s words were too late to quell the synapses in his brain from shooting messages of frightened nausea back and forth.

That’s how the two of them ended up sitting on the front porch, a glass of water each, doing nothing at all but watching the sun come up. Brad had dragged Nate off into the desert that morning, early, so there wasn’t a sound anywhere but Walt’s steady breathing next to Ray’s catching his in throat every ten minutes. It was as if even the birds and insects were sitting in wait for when Ray’s walls would come crumbling down.

And they did crumble.

It started with Ray vomiting over the railing on the porch after Walt made him talk for an hour straight about the things he had learned while reading _Susannah_. His shirt was soaked through with so much sweat that it was becoming more of a hindrance than anything else, so he tore it off to wipe his mouth clean before sitting back down. Walt had tried to put a hand on his back, comfort him, but the feel of skin on skin made Ray shiver and he just pushed him away. The hurt look on Walt’s face only made him empty out the rest of his stomach into yet another bush.

"I need to go lie down," Ray swayed on the spot. "Don't follow me," he said to Walt as he moved passed him and into the house.

The sheets on his bed were cool to the touch when he collapsed onto them, blacking out almost immediately. When he woke up later, his gut was twisted and before he could stop himself he leaned his head over the side of the bed and heaved. There wasn't much of anything left in his stomach, but what was there landed in a bucket. _Walt_ , he thought. Ray lifted his head to see a fresh glass of water and some aspirin sitting next to his bed.

"How do you feel?" a voice came from the corner.

Ray moved to see Walt standing there, looking relaxed.

"What did you say?" Ray asked, blinking his eyes to try and focus.

"I asked how you are?" his voice came harsher.

"I feel like dying," Ray whispered.

"Well...that can be arranged," Walt said.

Ray sat up just in time to see Walt pull a gun out of the band of his shorts. His eyes went wide as Walt smiled and pulled the trigger. He looked down at the blood seeping from his chest and could hear Walt laughing from the corner.

"Look at you!" Walt laughed out.

He began digging at his chest trying to get the bullet out, his hands covered in blood. "What the fuck, Walt?!"

Walt was still laughing.

"Walt...Walt...Walt!" Ray kept repeating, feeling the pain spread through his chest. "WALT!"

Ray shot up in his bed, the room dim in the evening sun. He scooted back on the bed so that he was flush against the wall. There wasn't blood, there wasn't a bullet hole, and Walt wasn't lurking in the corner with a smoking gun. Ray curled against his knees remembering the feel of having his best friend turn on him like that. It was all too much. He couldn't stay in his bed; he was dripping sweat and could feel spots on his face, arms and chest where vomit had stuck. A shower was all he needed, he decided. It took Ray a few tries to get out of bed and to the door.

His reflection in the mirror of the bathroom was pale and drawn. Ray flinched away from it, pulled off his pants and stepped into the shower. But the sensation of the water pelting off his skin wasn't soothing; it hurt, like actual physical pain. Out of reflex he jumped back from the spray; not even a second to brace as he slipped, hitting his head on the base of the tub.

Blackness.

Ray vaguely remembered Walt carrying him to bed, placing a towel on his forehead, a hand holding his and whispers in the night.

And then more blackness.

The blackness always returned.

"Ray?" he heard through the fog. "Ray...come on man, wake up." It was Walt's voice. Scared. "Ray!" he said stronger.

Ray realized he was shaking, his body jerking involuntarily. He could feel himself crying but there wasn't anything he could do to stop any of it. He shook, cried, yelled, and shook some more. The way Walt's hands gripped him was the only thing keeping him from slipping back into unconsciousness; the weight of them so sure.

His eyes shot open, obviously startling Walt with the abruptness of the move. Ray felt like he was breaking apart from the inside; a hand slowly and methodically moving to each bone and snapping it, strumming nerve endings like a guitar on its way. He bucked up. The scream that left his mouth didn't sound like it was coming from him, or anything human for that matter. Walt jumped on top of him to straddle his body in an effort to hold him still.

Ray heard a bang through the screaming, and then Brad was beside him with Nate hovering behind Walt. He thought he heard Brad say his name before the blackness took him over once more.

Time had no meaning to Ray during those days. Weeks. Months. He didn’t know when was when anymore. Sometimes he would wake up and hear bits of conversation pushing their way in through his ears.

"How is he?"

".........I don't know."

Then nothing.

"You should eat something."

"I can't stomach food yet."

Silence.

"Go. Sleep. I'll sit watch for a while."

"No, I won't leave him like this."

Pain.

Ray's mind wouldn’t allow him to differentiate who exactly was talking or what was going on. But he did know that Walt hadn't left him, not for more than a minute or two, which was the only thing certain in his life.

*

" _This is more than visualization - you know that, right_? She supposed she did. Something had changed her - had changed all of them. Jake had gotten the touch, which was a kind of telepathy. Eddie had grown (was still growing) into some sort of ability to create powerful, talismanic objects - one of them had already served to open a door between two worlds. And she?"

Ray awoke to these words being read out loud to him.

He let his head fall to the side and slowly opened his eyes to the light streaming in through his window. Walt was sitting cross-legged on the floor next to his bed reading the book Nate had given him to read, _Song of Susannah_. Ray let him continue, comforted by the steady sound of his voice washing over him, washing the past away.

"Objects," Ray said out loud, his voice thick.

Walt's eyes shifted up to meet his, a calm look on his face. "Objects?" he said, and Ray was grateful Walt was going with him.

"Susannah mentions objects...that's it," Ray paused, trying to wet his mouth. "It's an object."

"What...?"

"The key," a pause. "Doesn't look like a key," then another pause. "Something else."

And then he's sleeping again; a warm, quiet sleep.

*

The next time he woke up Nate was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, his eyes focused out the window.

"I'm sorry," Nate said without even looking at Ray or truly acknowledging that he was awake.

"Why?" Ray croaked.

It's only then that Nate turned to look at him. His eyes were sad, tense, not something that Ray had seen before. It was almost frightening.

"For all of this," Nate took a breath. "For throwing this at you, but we need you alive, healthy. It's not just you anymore."

To say that Ray was confused would be an understatement. "I thought Walt said that he --."

"No," Nate cut him off. "It was my idea. He was worried you'd die and I agreed; fuck Ray, if you could have seen how you looked, when you started to shake...." Nate trailed off, running a hand over his head. "I should have been here; I meant to be here."

Nothing was making any sense. Ray wasn't ready for a conversation like this yet, he wasn't sure he was ready for _anything_ yet. He felt like a cliché but everything was new now, new emotions, new thoughts, even his eyes felt new. And he wasn't mad. Part of him wanted to yell and scream and tell Nate to fuck off, but he couldn't. As lame as it was they had saved him.

"Nate," Ray said, scooting up in the bed. He was giving Nate a look that hopefully said "don't worry about it," and "thank you," and a million other things. But all he could do was nod and smile. And it was enough. Nate relaxed and Ray relaxed, that was it.

Out of the corner of his eye Ray saw _Song of Susannah_ lying on his bedside table, left from when Walt had been reading it to him. Suddenly he remembered about the key and it all came flooding back to him.

"It's an object!" he said, startling them both out of the peace. "They key, Nate, it won't look like a key from the outside. It's connected to something else, some random ass object that could be anything."

Nate was staring at him with this weird smile on his face. "How did you figure that out? You've been in and out for...."

"Walt was reading to me. I woke up and he was reading, and it just clicked," Ray interrupted excitedly.

Nate looked at him in a way that made him feel like he was thinking about something else entirely now. When his eyes refocused on Ray he asked, "Do you know what the object is yet?"

Ray was about to answer when the door opened and Brad walked in, a big toothy grin on his face. "It lives!" he said coming to a halt beside Nate.

"You can't get rid of my ass that easily, Brad," Ray said.

And then Brad kept talking, which wasn't something anyone would correlate with Brad Colbert. He talked about what had been going on the past few days, about training, about Walt, even about the fucking weather. Ray listened to him, occasionally looking back at Nate who just sat there with a small curve of his lips. That's when Ray saw it; Brad's hand was on Nate's back, his thumb pressed to the side of Nate's neck.

"Oh my fucking God!" Ray said, cutting off Brad. "You two finally gave it up. Motherfucker's couldn't have waited until I was with it enough to cheer you on? Fuck. Does Walt know about this? Oh shit," Ray began laughing. "He probably feels like he got some too from all the tension being gone."

Ray kept laughing until his sides actually hurt. Well, everything hurt on his body still, but the sides were a definite side-effect of the laughing. It wasn't helping that Nate was trying very hard to look displeased with him while Brad was practically giddy. It was about that time Walt shuffled in, his hair mussed by sleep.

"What's goin' on?" he asked.

Ray ended up telling Walt a much exaggerated story about how Daddy and other Daddy were finally admitting their love for one another and soon, if they were lucky, there would be a baby coming along (because that's what happens when two people love each other). And then Ray started demanding details and timelines.

It was silent for almost a full thirty seconds before Brad broke. "So we were going out to the desert...."

*

But everything didn't just suddenly snap into place. Ray still felt it deep inside of him; the draw would bubble up beneath his skin in those dark quiet hours of the morning. He was getting better though. Often in the week and a half that followed he would pad down the hall to Walt's room and fall asleep on the carpeted floor in there. It made him feel better just to be with him; the drumming in his chest would quiet and he could breathe again.

Ray was working almost exclusively on finding out precisely what the key looked like, and where the Cradle was located that often times he would find himself losing hours, days even. When Ray hit a hard patch, the clues not leading him down the right path, or when he hit a dead end, instead of hiding in his room and getting high, he would hop down and do pushups, sit ups, anything to distract himself. What surprised him the most was that it worked.

It was one of those times when it hit him.

"Nate!" he yelled, running out of the house.

Nate was around the side, sitting in the shade of one of the trees. "Nate, Nate," Ray urged, running up to him, but he didn't look up. When he reached him, Nate's eyes weren't focused, his breathing shallow. Ray stood transfixed looking at him. It still weirded him out to see Nate like this; part of him somewhere else.

"Nate," he whispered. "Come back."

It took a couple minutes, but then there Nate was, green eyes blazing again and focused on Ray's face. Nate reached his arms up and stretched as if he had just woken up. Ray let him go through this routine before he began talking.

"What is it, Ray?" Nate asked, his fingers flexing in the grass.

"I figured it out.... the location." Ray was practically bouncing on the spot.

"Show me," Nate said.

They rushed back into the house, Ray explaining to him on the way.

"They were numbers. I kept coming back to sets of numbers. In the book some of them are lucky, some of them are cursed. There were key words that didn't connect other than page numbers. It wasn't fucking clicking," Ray said, gesturing wildly with his hands as they pushed up the steps to his room. Nate was right there with him, his face focused, his eyes almost wild. They stopped right outside the door and Ray turned to him. "They're coordinates, Nate."

"Coordinates," Nate repeated him after Ray handed him the paper he had written them on. "Have you figured out the location yet?"

Ray smiled. "I'm not that backwards. I can read a fuckin' map."

He reached behind him and grabbed the open map book on his bed. The room seemed to still as he passed it to Nate: Opened to page 816. The Middle East. The former Iraq circled in black pen. Coordinates of 33 degrees, 20 minutes, 18 seconds Latitude / 44 degrees, 23 minutes, 38 seconds Longitude. Baghdad.

*

“Baghdad,” Brad said, moving his mouth like he was tasting the word on his lips.

Ray watched them all take in this news. He actually felt pride in himself, in something he had done. Walt was sitting by his side on the couch, both of them sitting cross-legged with their knees touching. It was still obvious at times that Walt wasn't used to being touched so much, but Ray couldn't help it. There was something about Walt that made him feel better; it stamped down the pain when it tried to rise. It wasn't like what Brad and Nate had, that was something of its own. No, what Ray felt was a different sort of bond through blood and life binding them together; a life that Ray hadn't known existed.

"How will we get there?" Walt asked, his question catching Ray's attention.

"I will take us," Nate said. "Like I brought you here."

They all nodded.

"Can we just zap right to the Cradle?" Ray asked.

"It won't be that easy. The Cradle is veiled in such a way that one must approach it on foot," Nate explained to them. "We'll only know the way when we're walking; ka will show us."

Walt nudged Ray with his elbow and looked at him out of the corner of his eye. Ray was trying not to smile and could see that Walt was doing the same. In the past couple weeks they had started to point out to one another each time Nate mentioned ka, fate showing them their way. It was just another thing that helped Ray keep distracted.

"So all we need now is the key?" Brad asked.

"That's right, Brad," Nate said, nodding and giving him the tiniest of smiles.

Ray rolled his eyes.

"How close are you to figuring out what it is?" Nate turned to Ray.

"I think I've got a pretty good picture of what it is, but it doesn't make much sense," Ray said, with a shrug. "Like _that's_ new."

"Describe what you can," Nate said, his eyes bright. Ray hadn't told anybody this yet; he had only halfway figured it out that morning.

"I know this makes no fucking sense," Ray started. "But I almost think it's the world with a giant eagle on it...," he trailed off. "I know, I know, but it's like, smaller. Maybe a globe...."

Walt was stock still beside him, his face white.

  
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](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/0001cw0r/)   



	4. Count to Three

_**Count to Three: Part 4**_  
  
 **Title:** Count to Three  
 **Part:** Part 4 Walt  
 **Author:** [](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/profile)[**l_s_d_me**](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/)  
 **Pairing:** Brad/Nate; Ray and Walt

Sometimes life didn’t seem real. Five months before Walt had no one and nothing but a stack of old books, but as Ray slung his arm around his shoulder and ruffled his hair, muttering something about how long it’d gotten, Walt finally had something to smile at and lean in to.

He still didn’t quite understand why he was there. He couldn’t comprehend weapons like Brad did, and he wasn’t some genius like Ray was. Walt just saw himself as average; average with guns, average brains, average everything. He could see everyone advancing, becoming better and better. Walt didn’t feel like he had changed at all. Sure, his hair was longer, he was tan, but nothing compared to them.

“You don’t see it, do you?” Nate asked him one evening as they sat in the library talking. “They’re improving because _you’re_ here. You’re making us as strong as we are.”

Walt could only shake his head. It wasn’t the first time Nate had said something like that to him, and he knew it probably wouldn’t be the last, but it helped. He absently wondered who comforted Nate, calmed him when he was lost. But then in the mornings or late at night he would see Brad and him talking quietly in a corner, or just sitting together in silence, and he knew. And in a way it was almost everything he’d ever wanted. He knew he was with people who cared about not only him, but each other. It was such a complete one-eighty from his life before that it still left him reeling from time to time.

Sometimes it was as if he had to learn who he was all over again.

Yes, Walt still loved books, and nearly always carried around an obscure pocket version of _Catch-22_ in paperback that Nate had found for him somewhere. But there was more to his life than there had been. He laughed so hard at times that he thought he would pull a muscle in his side. And he sang. Mostly country songs softly under his breath while doing inane projects around the house, waiting for and knowing that Ray would show up, dramatically put an arm around him, lie his head on his shoulder and sing along.

It was new and it was everything.

When he wasn’t lost in his head he spent a lot of time watching. It was Ray mostly that he kept an eye on. There had never been anyone in his life that he cared so much about, or that cared so much about him. On some days it physically hurt to see him tearing himself apart from the inside out.

Walt would go to sleep some days dreading the cold grey hours of the morning, the time he knew was worst for Ray. It would wake him up like a shotgun blast to the chest, the icy despair he could feel coming off of Ray from down the hall. Sometimes it enveloped him in a black cloud, whispering hatred and death at him so that it was all he could do to run down the hall and bang on Ray’s door, hoping he’d answer.

He always did; and it would feel like a dam breaking, relief from both of them that neither would be left alone in the world. Walt was hardly ever able to stop himself from pulling Ray into a hug, feeling the tears from Ray’s face wetting his shoulder, his neck. They almost burned him.

“I don’t know how else to help him,” Walt would often say to Nate. He would give Walt a look that said, “Yes you do” but never pushed.

Walt couldn’t bring himself to push, so Nate did it for him.

So they went back to watching – both of them – and in the nighttime hours when Brad and Ray were off working, the two of them planned and studied. Nate was going to push Ray so far into theory that he would wear himself out from the hours his mind and body were keeping; and then he would take the stash from all of Ray’s hiding places that Walt had found. They were going to help Ray together; carry him through this on their shoulders. Nearly three days were spent reading up on what would happen to Ray when he began detoxing and Walt tried to prepare himself for what he was about to see.

And then one night Nate came in his room, making sure the door was closed tight before speaking.

“Tomorrow,” Nate said with finality.

Walt took a deep breath before nodding in agreement. “Tomorrow,” he whispered.

*

To say that he was frowning would be putting it lightly. Walt couldn’t manage a smile, or wipe the concern from behind his eyes. He and Ray were sitting in the study with Ray reading _Song of Susannah_ , and himself making notes in his notepad when he noticed Ray just sitting there staring at him. That wasn’t out of the ordinary though, and neither was the slight look of panic in his eyes. _He needs some_ , Walt thought as he turned the page and flipped the pad over. He wasn’t writing anything particular, just random facts he remembered and every so often doodling in the corner, a poor replica of his old key chain.

He pretended not to notice or care when Ray jumped up from his chair declaring that he’s hungry, something he did a lot in an effort to get Walt to stop working and go hang out with him. But apparently this time Ray wanted him to get up and make "a big Italian you're-gonna-explode-from-all-the-food” type of lunch.

"You're not Italian," Walt told him, not looking up from his notes.

"I know you're not but what am I?" Ray taunted, in this tone of voice that always made Walt smile. Damn Ray.

"What?" Walt finally looked up, the corner of his mouth curving a bit.

"What?" Ray said back before walking out of the room.

Walt sat there and watched him go; knowing that today was the day it would begin. So he steeled himself, got up, and went after him.

Ray was getting the ingredients out of the cabinet when Walt walked in. "I knew you couldn't resist," Ray said turning to smile at him.

"I just don't want you to burn the house down," Walt said as he sat down, watching and waiting to see if Ray would drop any of the eight boxes and jars he was holding.

"Aren't you going to help?" Ray pouted at him, nearly tipping the scroodles on the floor.

"No,” Walt deadpanned.

But he did. He always did because it was genuinely fun to cook with Ray. Somehow he knew what he was doing; and always knew exactly what spice to add to make the food delicious. Once he muttered something under his breath about how his aunt used to just add salt and pepper and how wrong it was to ignore the fun spices, but Walt never pressed him about it.

Walt tried to keep his mind occupied, and for the most part it worked. He prepared the garlic bread, and laughed at Ray when he became covered in red sauce, but the thought of what he and Nate were planning to do tonight kept creeping back in through the cracks and corners of his mind.

“I’ll be right back,” Walt said before turning on his heels and walking into the hallway. He just stood there breathing, his eyes closed. He could do this, he told himself. Nate believed in him, and he could believe in himself as well.

He was almost back in the kitchen when he could feel the air had visibly shifted. _Ouch_ , he thought has he turned the corner to see Brad and Nate seated at the table. He swayed, able to feel a hundred million different feelings come off of the pair: anger, worry, annoyance, and something else lighter and fluffier Walt thought. That one made him smile.

“Whoa...Have a bad session today, Brad?” Walt said with a wink. “It’s not quite the love fest it was this morning."

 _Shit Shit Shit Shit_ , Walt thought as he turned to see the faces on him. Brad looked like he actually wanted to kill him, Nate seemed to find it almost precious, and Ray nearly choked to death on the noodle he was testing for doneness.

“So…,” Walt trailed off doing his damndest to backtrack. “I’m just going to start keeping more things to myself.”

Ray was practically shaking with laughter when Walt saddled up next to him at the stove, quietly telling him to “shut up!” under his breath. Walt looked at him pleadingly, and was relieved when Ray gave him a small roll of the eye before screeching A-Ha’s “Take Me On” at the top of his lungs. It actually didn’t help Walt’s situation much because he and Ray had a long running joke about Nate being just like the man in that video. A joke they never wanted Nate to find out about if he was being honest.

But it did its job with Brad and Nate, and broke the tension up a little. Ray told them to dig in just as Walt was setting down the pan full of spaghetti – the different types of noodles standing out in relief from each other but neither Brad nor Nate said anything about them. Walt watched them watch each other out of the corner of their eyes. The air softened and Walt could feel everything right then, and it made the back of his neck hot. He knew he should have at least been trying not to hone in on them, and almost poke around the space surrounding them, but he couldn’t help it. It was kind of beautiful to him, like this soft pink haze (that nobody would ever know about because Walt wanted to live a long and happy life) filled the air.

So yeah, lunch was a good idea.

*

“What are we going to do with it?” Walt asked Nate as he stood there holding every speck of Ray’s drugs that the house held. “Hide it?”

Brad and Ray were in the kitchen bickering as they cleaned up after lunch, leaving Walt and Nate to go work on their usual studies. Only this day wasn’t like every other day; it was about Ray and making him better. Walt thought it was more important than anything else they had done.

“I don’t want to hide it on the grounds because there’d be too big of a chance he’d find it,” Nate told him resolutely. “I’m getting rid of it for good.”

“How…?” Walt started to ask, but then the air around Nate vibrated, and he was gone. His eyes focused on the spot in front of him that now stood empty. It was as if he could see a faint outline of Nate still, like he wasn’t completely gone. Slowly he reached out, his hand inching closer to the spot; it felt both warm and cool at the same time, like an ice cube sliding down bare skin on a hot day. Walt’s eyes closed and he could see Nate standing on the side of an abyss, blackness underneath him. He was mumbling something under his breath as he held Ray’s possessions out in front of him, hovering over the edge. In an instant they were gone and it seemed like the whole world had run out of light. Walt gasped to himself as Nate turned back, his eyes burning green through the darkness and suddenly he was right there again, his feet planted on the floor of the library.

“What was…?” Walt began, but Nate stopped him. He touched the juncture of his shoulder and neck, shaking his head to stop him.

“The universe is a big place,” Nate said. “And there are some places we don’t speak of.”

Walt nodded and backed away from him, moving to lean against the table. “And now we wait,” he said, his mind going to Ray laughing in the kitchen.

“We wait.”

*

Walt could feel it coming. It awoke him, the nausea pulsing off of Ray from his room. It reminded him of the first night everything started - the dream - waking with nausea and puking his guts out in the bathroom. Life had moved in full circle apparently. He got up and moved silently down the hallway until he was sitting outside of Ray's closed door. "We wait," he repeated the words he and Nate had spoken to each other in his head.

As he sat there he closed his eyes and tried to hone in on Ray's feelings. It was something that he had been working on with Nate. In most ways it was the same thing Nate did when he moved through time, the way he relaxed his mind and body, focusing on something specific. Everything was churning inside of Ray and Walt could pinpoint each emotion and its cause. He was concentrating so hard he almost missed Ray pulling his bedroom door open, a broken panic on his face.

Walt instinctively grabbed his wrists in an attempt to try and anchor them both as he said he took the drugs, taking the brunt of Ray's hurt so maybe, if he hated Walt after all of this, he could still have a good relationship with Nate.

They sat on the porch all morning. Walt watched him go through cycles of sweating, goose bumps breaking out on his arms and neck, and then the vomiting started.

"I need to go lie down," Ray swayed in front of him. "Don't follow me."

Two deep breaths and he followed Ray into the house. From the door frame he could still see him stumbling up the stairs and practically falling into his room. He wouldn't let Ray know that he was watching him; he'd use whatever stealth training Nate had instilled in him these past months to not be seen. Which, okay, he realized wouldn't take much since Ray was completely out of it, but still, the thought made him feel stronger.

The sound of Ray whimpering in pain was clear as day through the closed door and right to where Walt was resting on the third step from the top, squeezing his eyes shut to slow the tide of nausea he felt from Ray. He heard him as he dreamed, as he gasped, as he yelled, and when he woke up and stumbled out of his room and down the hall to the bathroom.

Walt was leaning back with his head on a banister when he heard a crash come from the bathroom. "Shit!" he said as he took the final steps and turned to the bathroom.

Ray was lying passed out on the shower floor. Walt realized how thin Ray really was as he lied there looking broken and naked. He grabbed the nearest towel and covered Ray with is as he picked him up, carrying him back to his room. When he got in there he noticed night had fallen. _When did that happen_? he thought as he tucked Ray under the covers and placed a rolled up towel on his forehead.

It was quiet, but that only lasted for a minute because then Ray was twitching and jerking involuntarily, tears rolling down his face. Walt grabbed his arms to try and hold him still; he was worried that Ray was going to hurt himself.

"Ray?" Walt asked, scared. "Ray...come on man, wake up."

His convulsions grew stronger, so much so that he was nearly bucking off the bed. Walt climbed on top of him, straddling his legs and holding his arms down.

"Ray!" he said stronger, shaking him. "Come back, Ray!"

The door behind him burst open and suddenly Brad was in front of him, his hands grasping at Ray's shoulders. He could see Nate standing stock still in his peripheral vision.

"What's happening to him?" Brad asked, concern evident in his voice.

Walt looked at Nate and for a moment he wanted to hit him. It wasn't that he was mad at him, not really, but he hadn't been here and hadn't seen what these first hours had done to Ray. It coursed through him and he suddenly realized that he wasn't feeling his own emotions, these were Ray's and Brad's mingled together. Pain and abandonment as one.

He heard Nate say, "He's detoxing," to Brad before falling sideways off the bed.

*

Ray began screaming at ten o’clock the next morning. He never opened his eyes, he never stopped, and all Walt could do was stare transfixed at the expanding and contracting of his ribs as his lungs filled up with air. Walt felt like he was being ripped apart from somewhere deep inside, somewhere he didn’t know even existed until that moment. His hand gripped the bedpost until his knuckles were white and nothing more than muscle memory was keeping him on his feet. He saw, rather than felt, Brad come in and pry his hand off the post, and half carry him out of the room before everything went black again.

He wasn’t out that long because Brad was still by his side when he came to.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself,” Brad said, worry causing his brow to crease.

Walt just looked up at him and nodded, but knew that there was no real commitment on his face. Brad sighed and put a hand on his shoulder, “Come get me next time, okay?” he said. “We’re not alone anymore,” Brad told him in a rare moment of pure honesty.

“Okay, Brad,” Walt said, reaching up and grasping Brad’s arm between them. “Okay.”

But that was just the beginning.

When the screaming finally stopped and Walt could relax, he went to sleep for what felt like the first time in days, but what had really only been a singular day. He awoke with a start, hearing a crashing sound coming from the room down the hall; Ray’s bedroom. Walt wasn’t prepared for what he saw when he walked in. Ray was thrashing around on the floor, with Nate on top of him, his knee in the small of Ray’s back pinning him down.

“GET THE FUCK OFF ME!” Ray yelled, his eyes nearly black with rage.

Walt’s head spun.

“Walt!” Nate said his name, commanding him to look. When he acknowledged him it was obvious that it hadn’t been the first time Nate had tried to get his attention, but fuck if he hadn't heard anything other than the pounding in his ears.

Without hesitation Walt dropped to his knees next to them. "Ray, Ray," he pleaded. "It'll be okay. Let us help you...."

Ray flipped suddenly, knocking Nate off to the side just enough to get an arm loose. His fist landed hard against the side of Walt's head, punching him in the ear. "FUCK!" Walt gasped as he grabbed Ray's hand which was still flailing in his direction. He twisted his arm as he brought an elbow up. Ray's head went back as he fell unconscious.

Nate was still half on top of Ray, his chest heaving from the adrenaline. Walt stood up and walked straight past him without a second glance. He stopped by the closet outside the bathroom; leaning his head against the door he took a deep breath before punching the door three times in quick succession. "Goddamnit," he whispered to himself as he grabbed a sheet from the closet.

Ray had been lifted and put back on the bed when Walt came back.

"What are you going to do with that?" Nate asked as Walt just stood in the doorway holding a sheet.

Walt looked down at it and wondered if this was the right thing to do, or if it would just make Ray hurt more. They couldn't risk an actual injury though so Walt started unfolding the sheet, pulling his pocketknife out so he could tear the fabric easier.

"We're tying him up," Walt told him with no room for argument.

*

It was easy for Walt to see that Ray was forgetting events and even whole days while the drugs were working their way out of his system. He stayed nearly the whole time, helping Ray when he threw up, placing a cold rag on his head when he would break out in sweat, covering him up when he got cold, and then uncovering him minutes later when he started complaining about the blankets burning him. He stayed.

On the fifth day Walt realized nothing in his life that week was his; everything was Ray. He knew Ray would forget most of this, just like he had been so far. Forgetting was for the best. Really. Still, Walt couldn't forget, he didn’t have that luxury and wouldn’t have wanted it even if he had. He’d remember what he had seen him go through, so one evening while leaning against the far wall of Ray's room he scribbled down a list of things Ray didn't remember and probably never would.

 _The screaming.  
Sleeping for three days straight.  
Being tackled by Nate and tied to the bed.  
Shaking and then choking on vomit.  
Punching me in the face.  
Laughing uncontrollably on and off for hours._

Walt kept one for himself though, kept the one that hurt the most off of the page. He didn't want to see the words written because he'd remember the look on Ray's face as he begged. "Kill me, Walt.... Do it. Kill. Me. If you don't do it, I'll fucking do it myself. Now! Do it!"

No.

Nobody needed to experience that and Walt didn't want to see the words written. That one was his own.

He did read other words though. One afternoon a couple days later he was sitting cross-legged on the floor by Ray's bed reading _Song of Susannah_ out loud to Ray. He was still passed out in bed, but the day before he seemed more coherent during his few awakenings. He hoped that some of it would be absorbed by Ray, maybe his brain would work something out

" _This is more than visualization - you know that, right_? She supposed she did. Something had changed her - had changed all of them. Jake had gotten the touch, which was a kind of telepathy. Eddie had grown (was still growing) into some sort of ability to create powerful, talismanic objects - one of them had already served to open a door between two worlds. And she?"

Ray awoke to these words being read out loud to him just like Walt knew he might.

"Objects," Ray said out loud, his voice thick.

Walt's eyes shifted up to meet his, he felt content for the first time in over a week. "Objects?" he said in return.

"Susannah mentions objects...that's it," Ray paused, trying to wet his mouth. "It's an object."

"What...?"

"The key," a pause. "Doesn't look like a key," another pause. "Something else."

And then Ray was asleep again; quiet and still while Walt read on.

*

That night Walt slept in his bed for the first time in over a week. It was more comfortable than he remembered, and he slept deeper than he had in what felt like forever. Slowly he woke up as the sun began to shine in his face. He shifted down a little to put his face back in shadow when he noticed something on his floor. Ray. Ray was curled up asleep on the rug next to Walt’s bed. He looked like a homeless puppy. Instead of asking questions he just grabbed a spare blanket that he had been using and dropped it down on top of him, rolled over and went back to sleep.

When he finally awoke completely a couple hours later Ray was gone, his blanket thrown back over Walt’s body.

Nate was coming out of Ray’s bedroom as Walt hit the staircase on his way to find some breakfast.

“You were reading to him when he figured it out,” Nate said without any preamble as he followed him down the stairs. “You,” he started again, placing his hands on Walt’s shoulders as he trailed behind him. “I knew it.”

Walt turned at the bottom of the stairwell to face him. “Huh?” was all he could manage.

Nate smiled openly at him. “Remember? I told you I thought that your presence would enhance everyone’s gifts, make them better?”

Walt nodded as everything began working itself out in his head. He had been reading _Song of Susannah_ to Ray when Ray woke up and figured out that the key didn’t actually look like a key, he might even already know what it is. _He_ had been telling Ray the words he needed to hear. Nate just stood there watching him work through it, waiting patiently as always.

“You want me to come out with you and Brad today,” Walt said without question.

Nate’s eyes sparkled. “Outside in twenty.”

It ended up being everyone as they drove out of town. Walt had been standing in the kitchen downing his glass of orange juice when Brad and Ray came from upstairs.

“Where’s the fire, Walt?” Ray asked, leaning against the fridge.

“Nate asked me to go out with him and Brad today,” he said, nodding toward Brad as he went about collecting his weapons and grabbing some water bottles.

The panic that jolted through him felt like it came from his bones. He turned his head to see Ray looking at him with frantic eyes.

“You’re leaving?” he asked, his hands shaking.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Nate had arrived downstairs again and was talking to Brad in the entry way.

“No…no, you’re coming with us,” Walt told Ray. “I wouldn’t leave you here alone.”

Ray visibly relaxed as he went over to the corner to slide on a pair of shoes he had left there. “Let me grab my book,” he said, running out of the room.

Nate looked at Walt with something akin to amusement, but nothing quite as light feeling.

“We can’t leave him here alone,” he whispered as if Ray would be able to hear him. “Not yet.”

“I know,” Nate told him, patting him on the back. “Meet us outside when he comes back down.”

The sun was well into the sky by the time they arrived at the make-shift range Nate had set up. Walt was standing with his back against the jeep with Ray sitting on the ground in the shade of the tires reading. Neither of them was speaking, they didn’t really have much to talk about at this point anyway, not that words were ever necessary between the two before. Walt knew they had a bond, and a strong one at that, but now that he had worked through Ray’s detox with him he felt as though it had solidified around his heart. It was almost as if they were nearly the same person now. He didn’t know if Ray felt this, but he did, so strongly.

Brad’s gun was going off in the background, and had been for the past twenty minutes. Nate, the sadist he is, was having Brad try to hit a target two hundred meters out without the help of a scope. The look on Brad’s face when he was asked to do this was worth the trip out here alone.

“This is retarded,” Ray said eventually, looking up at Walt. “Just go over there already, prove Nate right, so we don’t have to watch Brad sulk for the next hour while he tries to hit that thing.”

“He’ll probably get it,” Walt said, adding “eventually” when Ray elbowed him in the leg. “Fine.”

Nate looked dead serious as Walt stopped next to him.

“He can’t hit it,” Nate stated the obvious. “Go stand by him and do exactly what I say. I want to test this.”

Okay. Walt was now an experiment, he could do this. Brad was concentrating his line of sight down the barrel of the gun missing the target every single time. So Walt just stood there next to him as still as he could manage. It wasn’t really doing much. Walt couldn’t tell if Brad’s aim was getting any better just from his presence.

“Touch him,” Nate said from behind them.

When he placed his hand on Brad’s back it felt like all his senses had honed in as one. This time when Brad shot he winged the edge of the target, but grazing it none-the-less.

“Tell him to hit it,” Nate ordered.

Walt thought he’d do one better and try and mentally place it in Brad’s head as he said it instead of just saying the words. So he concentrated, in a sense it reminded him of what Nate does when he travels, he envisioned the words entering Brad’s mind as he spoke. “Hit the target, Brad.”

The top of it fell over with the force of Brad’s accuracy. From Walt’s vantage point he could see a small half smile form on Brad’s lips.

“Step back here next to me, Walt,” Nate called.

He still looked emotionless as Walt stepped backwards to where he had been standing before.

“Do it again, Brad,” Nate said.

Without hesitating Brad shot three times in quick succession destroying the bottom half of the target. He turned around with a smile on his face. Walt could feel the satisfaction rolling off of him as he joined them.

“Well done both of you,” Nate told them.

“I don’t know how I did that,” Brad said, still smiling. “Walt, I could kiss you.”

“And cheat on our new daddy?!” Ray yelled from his spot back by the jeep. “That’s not very gentlemanly of you, Bradley! I for one am offended you would even think of objectifying our dear Walt here. How could you!? He’s just a child for Christ’s sake. Nothing in the world can ever go back to how it was after hearing your wish to defile this young creature of God’s ma….”

“Shut up, Ray!” Brad, Walt, and Nate said in unison.

*

Later, as Walt lay back on the porch enjoying the night air, he realized something. He had touched all of them, helped them all with his presence. It had started out with a touch, but he knew he could do it with words as well. Like a spot in the back of his mind he could feel them all there, the connection growing and Walt knew that by sending positive thought, and concentration on that spot, that he would be able to affect them from a distance. He poked at it a little, feeling stronger himself as he tried to make his brothers stronger; and after ten minutes he was smiling as he pushed up from the wooden slats and up to his room.

That night he dreamed of his ex-girlfriend, the good times when they would sit and read with peace in the air.

Once again Ray was curled on the floor next to his bed when he woke up.

"Ray," Walt whispered still half asleep. "Ray."

"Mmmmm'whaaat?" Ray mumbled without even moving.

"Just get up here."

"Nah, this is fine," Ray said, rolling over. “It's fine."

Walt exhaled as he sat up, taking his own pillow and dropping it right on top of Ray's head before pushing his blanket off on top of him as well. He could only shake his head while Ray curled up under the blanket smiling.

"Try not to drool on my pillow," Walt joked as he pulled a pair of socks on and walked out of the room. He could see Ray flip him the bird as he closed the door behind him.

He felt giddy and warm as he made his way downstairs. It was just about dawn and he thought he'd eat a breakfast bar and then maybe go for a run. Which, yeah, wasn't something he generally wanted to do in his spare time, but he felt full of energy and hyped up. He hadn't felt this way in longer than he could remember. Walt hopped down the stairs before sliding across the floor and in through the doorway of the kitchen.

That's when he found the source of everything he had been feeling: the warmth, the giddiness, the electricity in his body.

He found it in the corner of the kitchen pressed up against the space between the refrigerator and the counter.

He found it as he looked at Brad pressing Nate up against the wall.

In one of Nate's legs wrapped around Brad's hip and the other giving him balance on the counter.

In the fact that Nate was pulling on the collar of Brad's shirt, while Brad was holding onto the top of the refrigerator for dear life.

In the silence of mouths against mouths and the small breathes in between.

But most of all it was in the hands that were intertwined, their thumbs rubbing against each other.

Walt was standing there looking at them when Ray came up behind him, peeking over his shoulder.

"Who knew you were such a pervert, Hasser," he whispered, making Walt jump.

He whipped his head around to see Ray looking at him with a hopelessly amused look on his face.

"Come on," Walt said, grabbing Ray's arm to pull him away at the same time Ray slid forward to get a better look.

"Ray!" he whispered harder. "Ray, stop it."

Walt had pulled him nearly to the library door when Ray yelled "GET SOME, BRAD!" which was followed by what sounded like a coffee cup being knocked to the floor in the kitchen.

*

A pattern started. Walt would wake up to find Ray asleep on his floor, sometimes with Song of Susannah lying open next to him, and he would throw down a pillow and blanket. On the days he got up, Ray would soon follow on his heels. It took almost two weeks for Walt to get Ray to sleep in the bed.

"If you're going to come in here I don't want you sleeping on the floor. Just get in the bed, there's plenty of room."

Ray had made some joke about them sleeping together before their first date, but the next morning Walt woke up to Ray's steady breathing beside him.

And during the day Ray would sit and read, always somewhere close by, or be working out. It seemed to Walt like every time Ray began to feel restless he would do push-ups until he was drenched in sweat, or sit-ups, or pull-ups on a branch outside. These things happened every day without fail, but even more-so was that Ray stayed by Walt. At first Walt hadn't realized it because they were all around each other so much anyway, then one night he woke up to Ray's snores beside him and he realized that never more than an hour would go by each day without Ray being in his eye-shot.

There was no change in anyone’s routines until one day when Walt was outside mediating with Nate. Walt was sitting in the crook on the side of the house where the porch stopped before the side of the house started. Nate had gone a little further and sat down in the grass underneath the tree; _always with the trees_ , Walt thought. Their goal was to be able to connect mentally without seeing or touching one another, much like the night they took Ray's drugs when Walt somehow saw where Nate had traveled.

With his eyes closed, Walt visualized himself moving around the side of the house to where Nate was. The colors were distorted, a little too bright, too visceral, but everything smelled the same. He pictured kneeling down next to him so that their shoulders bumped, settling back on his heels. Walt could feel himself moving into Nate's mind until it felt like something was pulling him in; Nate himself welcoming Walt's presence.

It was impossible to know how long they stayed like that, but then Ray was in front of Nate asking him to return.

"Nate," Ray whispered. "Come back."

Walt began to drift away as the spell was broken, his mind reconnecting with his body that was still sitting against the house. He gasped as he opened his eyes, breathing in mouthfuls of air as if he hadn't needed any before. Through it all he could hear Nate speaking to Ray in the distance.

"What is it, Ray?" Nate asked.

"I figured it out.... the location." Ray voice was practically vibrating.

"Show me," Nate said.

They ran straight past Walt in a flurry of explanations and codes that had led to Ray finally putting all the pieces together. In a funny way Walt felt pride in seeing Ray doing so well. He smiled to himself, closed his eyes, and dove back into the unknown.

*

The four of them were in the library that evening going over the new information Ray had found. They were headed for Baghdad, Iraq. Walt wasn't sure what it was called now, in Brad's time, but that's what it was in his time, and that's what it said on the map where Ray's traced the coordinates too, so they were sticking with it.

Walt sat with his knee and elbow up against Ray's as they mirrored each other's posture on the couch. Not surprising to him, each time he shifted Ray moved too, always closer, always touching. Sometimes Walt didn't know how to handle it, sometimes he froze, sometimes he still flinched, but he knew Ray needed it, and so did he.

"So all we need now is the key?" he heard Brad ask.

"That's right, Brad," Nate said, nodding and giving him a smile.

The flare in emotion between the two at that smile almost made Walt snort a laugh, and he could practically hear Ray roll his eyes at them.

"How close are you to figuring out what it is?" Nate asked Ray.

"I think I've got a pretty good picture of what it is, but it doesn't make much sense," Ray said, with a shrug. "Like _that's_ new."

"Describe what you can," Nate said, his eyes bright.

Ray hesitated for a moment, glancing at Walt for support.

"I know this makes no fucking sense," Ray started. "But I almost think it's the world with a giant eagle on it...," he trailed off. "I know, I know, but it's like, smaller. Maybe a globe...."

Walt suddenly felt like ice had frozen his veins and stopped his heart. He knew exactly what Ray was describing. He had seen it, held it, thrown it in anger, and carried it with him every day for years. And now Ray was drawing it and he felt like he couldn't breathe.

He looked up to find all three of them staring at him, Nate's hand on his forearm.

"Do you know what this is?" Nate asked, his voice more intense than Walt had ever heard it, his eyes uncharacteristically dark.

"Back the fuck up, Nate," Ray butted it, moving Walt back to the couch.

"You recognize what the key is," Ray said, squatting down in front of him. "What is it?"

Walt swallowed hard, trying to find his voice.

"It's my key chain," he whispered. "My key chain," he repeated louder. "And I left it there; I left it at my house, on my dresser. I had it and I left it."

He could fix this, he could make this better. Nate could take him there. Walt swore before he left that he would never step foot in his parent's house again, but this was before. Everything was before this moment.

"Nate," Walt was standing up and moving directly in front of where Nate was leaning against the table, his thumb moving idly back and forth along the edge of the map. Nate nodded once at Walt and he knew that this was going to happen before he even asked.

"We have to go back to Virginia," Walt told him. He wasn't asking, he wasn't looking for permission, they needed to move now. "Back to 1996."

"In the morning," Nate said. "The two of us will go in the morning." But as he nodded again Walt heard his voice in his head saying " _Calm down; don't let his defeat you. The weight of this isn't all on your shoulders_."

Walt could only nod back and let Nate's words work through the knot in his stomach.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/0001d231/)   


Everything around them was silent and still. From their vantage point it seemed like the whole city was frozen in night, save for the light snowfall and the two of them walking down the street. The sound of snow creaking underneath his shoes left Walt uneasy. Beside him Nate made no sound at all. It was as if the snow moved out of the way for him, leaving his steps silent.

The streets should not have been as empty as they were. Nate didn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary, but Walt had lived there his entire life. Things were too still, there had to be a reason. As they turned the corner onto the street Walt's house sat he saw it through a window. In someone's living room sat a tree decorated with lights and ornaments, an angel on top watching down over the family sitting on the couch.

"It's Christmas time," Walt said in a hushed voice.

Nate looked at him with his eyebrows creased. "Christmas," he tasted the word just like Brad had done when they first discussed Baghdad.

Walt smiled a little at him, a sad lilt to his mouth. "You don't know Christmas?" he asked.

"I know of it," Nate whispered, not willing to completely break the silence. "But I've never experienced it." He paused. "There was never anyone to celebrate with."

"I'm sorry," Walt said, bumping his shoulder against Nate's.

Nate only shrugged. "Don't worry about it," he told Walt. "Look," Nate said, stopping and pointing at the house to their left; Walt's house.

It looked exactly the same. The only difference was the tree in the front yard that now stood bare had been covered in leaves the last time Walt saw it. The house was lit throughout; the glow from the bulbs was visible from their spot out front. He didn't know if his parents were home, but it didn't matter. He wasn't there for them; he was there for his new family, his true family.

When his hand closed around the railing up to the front door his heart began pounding in his chest.

"Take a breath," Nate said from beside him as he pressed his hand against the center of Walt's back.

He was standing at the door, his eyes focused on the ground. Should he knock? Should he go straight in? Walt didn't know. Sure he had lived here, but it wasn't his home any longer. If he knocked would his parents even let him in? Walt looked up for the first time, his reflection crystal clear in the glass. He was so different than he had been before. Not just on the inside, but his hair was longer and looked darker, his face was tan with the hint of a five o'clock shadow on it; He looked like a different person. He was a different person.

"What's that thing that Ray likes to say?" Walt said, turning to Nate. "Go big or go home," he answered himself not waiting for an answer.

They smiled together as Walt reached out for the doorknob and pushed into the house.

If it was even possible, the house was quieter than the street had been. The fire was crackling in the living room, but that was the only sound coming from within. Without a second thought they moved forward, going directly up the steps to Walt's former bedroom. Walking past his parent's bedroom Walt slowed, tempted to knock, to speak out, but he kept moving.

His door creaked at he turned the knob and pushed it open. If he had thought that the front of the house looked the same, it held nothing to his room. It looked as if the night he left his parents had shut the door and never opened it again. His books were still lying forgotten on the floor along with his bag, and there was still a crease in his comforter where Ray had been sitting that night.

And there, covered in dust right on top of his dresser where he was left it, was his key chain. The globe and eagle exactly the way he remembered them.

Nate was silent beside him, his eyes trained on Walt, just watching as it was lifted from its spot. It felt exactly the same in his hand as it had before. He wiped the dust off before handing it to Nate, knowing that this was what Nate had been working for, what he was living for. Nate was visibly shaken as Walt laid the key chain in his hand.

"Take a breath," Walt said, repeating Nate's words from not five minutes before.

Nate nervously laughed as he closed his hand around it before bringing it up to touch his fist to his forehead. Then opening his hand as he whispered something Walt couldn't hear before touching the globe to his lips reverently.

Walt didn't know what to say so he went with a simple, "Congratulations."

"What are you celebrating?" a whisper came from the window.

It was the shadow of a man the color of dust. A watcher.

"How did you find us?" Nate asked, sounding calm and defiant.

It laughed at them.

"We're everywhere. Here. There. Your time. Bradley's time. Joshua Raymond's time. We wait. We watch for your return."

"Well," Walt said with a look to Nate. "We're leaving, so you can leave this place too."

It laughed at them again. "No. Nobody is leaving."

The floor behind Walt made a noise and the next thing he knew his father was standing in front of them, clearly drunk and oblivious to anything else in the room.

"What the fuck are you doing in my house?" he slurred, his eyes bulging at the sight of his son's transformation.

Walt flicked his eyes to Nate who was still staring at the creature by the window.

"Dad...can we talk about this downstairs?" he asked cautiously as he tried to herd his father back toward the door.

"I said nobody leaves," it whispered again, only now it was a couple feet closer.

Walt turned back around at the same time his father did, finally seeing the thing that occupied the other half of the room. He had a look of terror in his eyes that Walt had never seen before. He started moving backwards step by step, trying to get away from it.

"No one leaves," it repeated, moving forward.

With that, Walt's father moved to run out the door. The creature surged forward after him. _No_ , Walt thought, _no_.

He jumped straight into its path and yelled "Stop!" as he concentrated all his energy into it. The thing froze in its tracks; a flash of panic went through its eyes. "Don't.hurt.them." Walt said, punctuating each word.

It tried to move closer, but Walt stood his ground.

"Leave," he said, trying to draw from all the hidden wells of strength Nate had showed him in the past months.

Leave!" he yelled as he pushed everything at the creature. He felt glued to the floor as he pressed his energy forward. Walt could see it vibrating; the outside of the man was fading, being drawn back. "Now!" Walt said in a whisper and it flew backwards towards the window before disappearing.

Walt took a deep breath as he dropped to his knees unable to stand any longer. Instantly Nate was in front of him, grabbing him by the shoulders to hold him up. "How on Earth...?" he started before trailing off at the sight of Walt's father still standing by the door, frozen and white as a ghost.

"Why don't you go to bed, Mr. Hasser," Nate said, speaking to him like one would speak to a child.

"Wha...what? Oh.. yes.. well goodnight then," he said in a daze before wandering back down the hall.

Walt was trying to stand but he couldn't get his legs to work properly, he felt completely drained.

"Are you okay?" Nate asked.

He could only nod.

Nate slid his arm underneath Walt's and lifted him up to the standing position. "You're going to have to tell me how you did that one day," Nate said before the traveling began again.

*

Walt remembered showing back up in their house, and Ray running into the room soon after they re-appeared. Nate eased him down onto a chair before turning to Ray and Brad, who had just walked in.

"How did it go?" Brad asked, his eyes studying Walt.

He gave Brad a smile but let Nate answer because he was still out of it.

"Ray," he whispered while Nate was telling them everything that had happened. "Could you help me upstairs? I need to lie down."

Ray didn't ask any questions before putting his arm around Walt and helping him out of the room, up the stairs, and into what had basically become their bedroom.

"Thank you," Walt said as he slumped down on his bed, toeing off his shoes.

"Are you seriously okay, man?" Ray asked as he helped Walt get his feet up in bed and get covered.

"I'm fine; I'll tell you about it tomorrow," he whispered.

He looked at Ray for a moment before his eyes fluttered closed. "Are you wearing my shirt?" he asked, but was asleep before he heard the answer.


	5. Count to Three

_**Count to Three: Part 5**_  
  
 **Title:** Count to Three  
 **Part:** Part 5 Nate  
 **Author:** [](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/profile)[**l_s_d_me**](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/)  
 **Pairing:** Brad/Nate; Ray and Walt

  
Nate was still holding the key when he woke up the next morning. It was full daylight outside and he knew immediately that he had slept later than he had in months, maybe years, but he didn't care. This was going to be his day off, he decided.

"I was beginning to think you were never going to wake up," Brad said from beside him.

He closed his eyes as he smiled before rolling over. Brad was half sitting up, a book in one hand and a pen in the other. Nate squinted up at him as the light streaming in through the window was falling directly over the top half of Brad.

"I'm glad to see you were so concerned," Nate said, closing his eyes again.

Brad was warm beside him so he moved one arm over his stomach, his fingers passing through the light hairs below Brad's belly button and coming to rest on his hip.

He felt Brad's shrug. "Well sir," he started, "we're not convinced you even can die, so a little sleep wasn't anything to worry about."

He was joking and Nate could tell, but his body tensed anyway. "We can all die, Brad."

Silence.

The next time he woke up Brad was still there, only he had scooted down and had his forehead pressed to Nate's. Nate opened his eyes to nothing but a sea of tan skin, blonde hair, and the slow rise and fall of Brad's chest.

"We can all die," Nate whispered to himself as he squeezed the key still in his hand that was draped around Brad.

Nate kissed him soft at the corner of the mouth before dragging his lips along Brad's jaw and kissing the spot right below his ear.

"Brad," he whispered into his ear.

There was a low rumble in Brad's chest that reverberated through Nate as he kissed him again in the same spot. When he pulled back Brad's eyes were open and watching him, sharply awake. Nate raised his eyebrow in challenge, waiting for Brad to react. He didn't. So Nate squeezed the arm around him tighter, kissing down the line of his neck and stopping only to bite lightly on his collarbone. He could feel Brad's breath quicken as he ran his tongue along where he had just bitten.

When Brad moved his leg on top of his he knew what was going to come next. Still, the feel of Brad turning them so he was on top of Nate was overwhelming and fucking perfect.

Nate stared up at him, his mouth wet and open as Brad ran his hand up from his hip, skimming up his side then back down his arm before lifting it up over Nate's head. He rolled his body up into Brad's, trying to make as much contact as he could. But Brad stayed where he was except for the hand on Nate's wrist that was sliding up and opening Nate's palm. He let Brad take the key out of his hand and set it on the bedside table. Nate just looked at it resting there, afraid it would disappear if he looked away.

"It's not going anywhere," Brad said, leaning down to place a kiss on Nate's temple. "I'm not going anywhere."

Nate brought is free hand up to grip the back of Brad's neck. They kissed slowly, their lips lingering against each other then pulling away before coming back together again. Nate wanted to stay like this forever.

But forever was put on hold when Ray knocked on the door before yelling, "Can you guys just do it already? Walt's too turned on to concentrate."

They laughed for a full ten minutes.

*

"What we need to do," Nate started, "is begin to collect supplies."

"I'm bringing Tootsie-Rolls," Ray blurted out.

Everybody looked at one another before ignoring him.

"Choose what weapons you want to take. Nothing that will slow you down." Nate held his hand up to stop Ray from speaking. He always wanted to take the rocket launcher. Always. "We'll leave at the end of the week."

"We should make a list over the next couple days," Brad said. "And then me and Nate can run into town and pick it all up."

They all nodded in agreement, Ray and Walt smiling bigger than normal.

***

Brad knew he couldn't drive his bike to pick up the supplies, but fuck, he really wanted to. He wanted one last ride. One last feeling of freedom as he sped down the road. Nate was strong behind him on the seat, reassuring. He wanted.

***

Walt watched them drive away in the jeep.

"Now," he yelled, and in the next instant Ray was dragging a small tree in through the kitchen door.

"Put it in the library," Walt told him.

He was making Christmas for Nate. They were all going to celebrate, but Nate had never had a family holiday like this and Walt wanted him to feel that before the end.

***

Ray was dancing around the kitchen as he cooked. It was fucking Christmas dinner and he wasn't about to burn it, but he just couldn't stand still. He could be still later, a different day, not Christmas. And especially not a Christmas that involved his first real family in God knows how long.

No.

He was going to do this right. Walt had been in the library for hours decorating the tree, hanging up garlands, and making sure there was enough firewood. There were even presents under the tree.

He wasn't going to fuck this up.

***

Nate watched Brad out of the corner of his eye as they pulled up to the corner of the house.

"Stop staring," Brad deadpanned as he killed the ignition.

"Something is up," Nate said, giving him an accusatory glare. "I can tell from your face."

The two of them sat there in the dark giving each other challenging looks. To an outsider it would have looked like a competition over who could raise their eyebrows higher.

"I have ways of making you tell," Nate said, purposely dropping his voice lower as he touched the bit of skin where Brad's shirt had ridden up.

"That's cheating," Brad told him, but didn't move to stop the touch.

Nate leaned forward until his mouth was very nearly on top of Brad's; open slightly just like Brad told him once that he liked. "Tell me," Nate whispered before biting his bottom lip.

Brad grunted low in his chest when their mouths opened to each other. Nate screwed his eyes shut and gave it all to him, rising up in his seat to try and anchor Brad over on top of him. He only stopped when Brad bit his bottom lip and then slowly dragged his teeth over the entire thing as it left his mouth.

"I'm still not telling you," he said before climbing out of the jeep.

Nate sat there staring up at the house and noticing the complete lack of lights on other than the kitchen. Something was up.

"Get your ass out here Fick and help me carry this shit inside," Brad yelled through the back where the hatch was open.

Nate hated surprises.

Yet, there he was following Brad up the front porch steps with a pang of excitement in his stomach. They placed their bags in the closet right inside the front door since nothing was perishable; plus Brad told him that he wouldn't allow him further into the house with "work on your mind."

"Gents!" Brad yelled out, stuffing his hands into his front pockets.

It felt like the first time Nate ever saw fireworks when the lights came on. There were lights spun and wrapped around the banisters, white and green woven together. Along the wall there were a few wreaths that were also lit up somehow. Nate smiled at it all. When he turned to Brad he wasn't there. His eyes searched through the dimly lit entry way and noticed the library seemed to be glowing. As he walked towards it he could hear Ray being shushed by Walt. He moved slowly, putting one foot in front of the other.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he felt when he entered the library.

"Merry Christmas!!" Ray and Walt yelled while Brad stood by them smiling from ear to ear.

So maybe Nate did like surprises.

The three of them were standing in front of a fully decorated Christmas tree lit by several strands of colorful lights. There were candles in the windows and the fireplace was crackling behind him. Nate felt like someone was standing on his chest. He choked out a laugh that he thought sounded more like a sob than anything else.

"What is this?" he asked, his voice hushed.

"We're celebrating," Ray said.

"We made Christmas for you," Walt beamed at him.

"Tis the season, apparently," Brad said.

Nate looked at each one of them and everything he never thought would happen to him in this or any other lifetime. They weren't just a team, or people brought together by fate, or anything else now other than a family. They were his family. His first one in longer than he could remember.

He walked up to Ray, taking his head in his hands and touched their foreheads together.

"Thank you," he whispered. And as he did he let go a little of his pain.

Walt closed his eyes and bowed his head as Nate moved in front of him, doing the same as he did to Ray. He knew Walt could feel him letting go. There were tears on Walt's face when Nate opened his eyes and looked at him.

"Some fights aren't worth fighting," Walt whispered just to him. Nate nodded before moving on to Brad.

He released the last breath he had been holding as their foreheads touched. Brad had changed everything; he had been the first of the three, his presence had kick-started their journey, nothing was the same after Brad.

"Thank you. All of you," Nate said. "I don't know what I've done in life to deserve what's in this room right now, but I'm grateful for all of it."

Nate stepped back from the group and bowed to them. "Merry Christmas."

*

They laughed and joked all through dinner. It ended in Ray unbuttoning the top button of his jeans and declaring that he was never going to eat again, but that they should all pay allegiance to him for being "such a badass motherfucking cook."

"We've got more," Walt announced, gesturing for everyone to get up and follow him.

When they were back in the library Nate noticed that there were several small (and poorly wrapped) presents underneath the tree.

Nate laughed even more as Ray dropped to his knees in front of the tree and began shaking them all.

"You're so messed up, Ray," Walt laughed, sitting down beside him. "You know what half of those are."

"I'm excited, leave me alone," Ray pouted at him.

All of them sat cross-legged on the floor with the firelight in the background. Walt was in charge of handing out the presents because Ray was still trying to shake and smell all of them. Nate looked down at the small pile of gifts in his lap.

"Well open them!" Ray bounced up and down urging everyone on.

The gifts were simple things like razors, shaving cream, worn out books, lube ("Thank you, Ray," Brad said before shoving Ray over to his fits of laughter), a pack of gum, and shoe laces.

"I don't have anything to give you guys," Nate said to them, wishing he had something to give.

"Don't worry about it," Walt told him. "You gave me a family."

"Life," Ray said.

"And purpose," Brad finished, clasping a hand on Nate's shoulder.

*

Nate laid in bed hours later with the low hum of warmth filling his body. They would be leaving tomorrow night for the desert; it was finally time. He didn't know how it was all going to end; only that it was going to one way or the other. It was coming.

The door to his room quietly opened as Brad stepped inside. He looked tired, but happy. Nate just watched him close the door before leaning back against it, his hands behind his back.

"I have something for you," Brad said.

Nate sat up with his back against the headboard. "You do?"

Brad nodded slowly as he brought his hands out from behind his back. "Merry Christmas, Sir."

He held a small box, just a few inches long and just as wide. Brad's hand had a slight tremor in it as he held it out in front of him. Nate picked it up off of Brad's palm careful to hold it as gingerly as Brad had. He waited until Brad was sitting on the edge of the bed before lifting the top. His breath caught in his throat as he looked down at the carving that was resting inside the box. It was a small, flat piece of wood with a tree carved into the top of it. It was beautiful. In place of leaves were a series of cuts in the shapes of circles and lines that somehow still made it look alive and breathing.

"Brad," Nate breathed out as he lifted it out of the box. "Did you make this?"

"Yes."

"It's beautiful," Nate said, running his fingers over it. "Merry Christmas, Brad," he said as he leaned forward to kiss him.

Brad felt just as warm as he did. The fire that made the whole room glow before seemed to be within them now as Brad kissed him back, his hand curving around to hold Nate's neck. Nate bit at Brad's bottom lip; and when Brad moved his tongue to sooth the bite Nate was right there to meet him brushing his right along Brad's.

They never broke contact as Nate set his present on his bedside table and Brad climbed onto the bed. But then Brad pulled back as he kicked the blanket out of the way before going up on his knees, straddling Nate's legs. Nate wanted to tear Brad's shirt off, wanted to taste every inch of his body, but he could tell that right now was what Brad wanted.

Nate smiled as Brad ran his hands from the base of his hips up to his waist. He grabbed him and pulled so that Nate slid out of his sitting position and was back to lying down, only now he was underneath Brad. His Brad. It was silent between them as they sat frozen in that position, both of them staring at one another. Then, as if Brad had read his mind, he lifted the hem of his shirt just a little before pulling it over his head.

There was nothing Nate wanted more now than to run his hands up Brad's stomach, to his chest, so he did it. Up, up, up. Brad leered down at him when his hands went from his chest to his back, dragging down until they reached the waistband of his shorts. Nate didn't even hesitate before pulling them down as far as he could.

His eyes went up and down Brad's body, tan and hard and right in front of him.

"Are you done objectifying me yet?" Brad asked. But he was smiling as he bent over, holding himself up over Nate as he kicked off his shorts.

Nate didn't answer him. He leaned up a fraction of the space in between them to bite at Brad's jaw. Brad let the lower half of his body fall down on top of Nate. He smiled as he hooked his leg over Brad's to hold him down while he ran his tongue along Brad's jaw.

"Jesus, Nate," Brad groaned as he ground down into Nate.

"Something wrong?" Nate whispered into his ear.

Brad turned his head, meeting Nate's mouth that was waiting for his. Nate loved the weight of Brad on top of him and the taste of their mouths together. He loved him.

"I love you," Nate said out loud as it struck him. Brad stilled. He pulled back, running his thumb from the bottom of Nate's lip to his cheek.

"You have to know I feel the same," Brad told him.

They stared at each other for a long time; just looking and touching each other arms and faces. When they kissed again it was different, harder, and more urgent.

Nate opened his legs up wider beneath Brad and thrust up hard as Brad pushed down against him. Both of them were breathing heavy, hot breaths into each other's mouths; not quite kissing, but grazing their tongues against the other at random intervals.

"Fuck," Nate moaned, burying his head in the crook of Brad's neck.

"I want to hear those noises you make in my sleep, Nate," Brad said as he sat back on his legs.

He ran his hands down Nate's thighs before using his thumbs to bend his legs up. Nate just watched him; watched as the blue in Brad's eyes darkened. He waited for whatever Brad wanted. He kissed the inside of Nate's knee; that was what he wanted. It was a spot that was all his own and nobody else's. The inside of his knee, his waist, a kiss at his wrist, Brad wanted them all and Nate was letting him have them.

Nate would give Brad everything he wanted.

  
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](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/0001eef6/)   


**

"We don't know what's going to be out there. They're going to try and stop us. They're going to do anything they can. Things are going to attack, the terrain is going to be unfamiliar, and we're going to face new challenges every hour we're out there. But we're ready for this. I know it and you know. Ka will help us along; we just have to listen to it."

Nate stood in front of them as he spoke. He could see them transformed in front of his eyes from what they all were when they started. Brad was stronger than before; still tan and fit, but he was more refined all around. Walt looked lethal, like a brand new person with his tanned skin and longer hair. He was wearing all black and looked like he could take down anything he needed to. Ray was next to him finally clean, so much stronger than before, healthier. He wore his hair slicked back and now had a tattoo of a giant eagle on the inside of his arm because according to him he wanted "to pretend to be some bad ass bird while fighting."

"Ready?" Nate asked.

"Ready," Brad, Ray, and Walt said all at once.

"Brad you're up first," Nate moved to him, gripped his arm, and took him.

The desert air hit him in the face like a slap. It was a dry heat like he had never experienced before. He looked at Brad beside him and could see the same reaction. They were next to an outcropping of stone, the night sky helping to give them even more cover from anything that might be watching the area.

"Are you good?" Nate asked Brad before heading back for the others.

"Good, Sir," Brad told him, nodding.

Nate went back for Ray and Walt, and soon they were all there, waiting to move for an hour or so in order to acclimatize to their new surroundings.

"Sure is dusty," Ray said.

Walt snorted. "We're in the desert, Ray, what did you expect?"

".....Less....sand.... I don't know, leave me alone, man. We just teleported give me a few minutes," Ray protested.

"Ray, shut up," Brad mumbled from where he was laid out beside them.

Two hours later they were moving through the darkness. Nate figured they were maybe four days of traveling away from the Cradle; that was as close as he could get them without raising alarms from anything out there. But he knew as they drew closer that every danger out there would be heightened.

The first day passed with nothing extraordinary. They walked, hydrated, kept rotating watch on breaks, and repeated it all.

Nate sat watch that night as his men slept. He could feel the air shift, like something far in the distance was building up. _Tomorrow_ , he thought as his eyes scanned the night. _Tomorrow_.

*

"What the fuck!?" Brad was standing up next to where Nate was seated on the ground.

Nate looked up at Brad and followed to where his eyes were looking.

He had never seen anything like that before in his life.

"Ray, Walt, get up," Nate said harder than he usually spoke to them. "Get up, now."

They jumped up, suddenly awake and staring wide-eyed at the scene in front of them. The four of them stood there in awe of the dust storm rolling their way. Only, it wasn't _just_ a dust storm. It was bright red and flowing towards them like lava. Nate thought it had to be at least a couple miles high and he didn't even want to contemplate how deep it was.

"Run," Nate ordered and they were off; the red cloud burning on their heels.

In the wind they could hear a roar carrying through the air. Nate was running as fast as he could with Brad ahead of him blazing a trail. Suddenly Ray fell, his boot catching on a root sticking out of the ground. It wasn't there a second before; they all knew it because he was directly behind Brad. Nate hardly slowed as he reached down to pull him to his feet.

"Watch out!" Walt called as the ground began to roil beneath them, roots and branches seeming to come out of the ground like waves. They had to jump and weave their way through the maze. As they slowed the cloud got closer, the roar louder. Nate saw Brad dip down a little looking at the lay of the land.

"There's a drop off," Brad yelled to them all. "It drops into water, trust me."

"How do you know that?" Ray yelled back as he tried to watch where he was going and watch the red cloud closing in on them.

"Listen!"

The roar. It was water.

When they got closer to the edge Nate could see the blue beneath them. Water. It was their only hope in getting out of here alive. He didn't know what the red cloud would do to them. It could burn them alive, it could blow their skin off their bodies, it could simply be dust, he just didn't know.

The edge came and they jumped, all of them together out into nothing. The fall only lasted second, but they hit the water hard. Luckily it was a deep pool because they couldn't risk breaking an ankle or leg. Nate popped above water gasping in a breath. He watched as the others emerged around him, all in one piece still. They got to the bank just as the cloud went over them. It was as if they were stuck in a very bright dawn; the sky burning bright and red.

"What is that?" Walt asked in awe.

"I wouldn't even know what to guess," Nate said honestly. "I've never seen or heard of anything like that before."

Nate looked down the bank and was glad to see there was a path out of the canyon they had just leaped into. They took a little time to dry off, go through their packs and make sure their weapons were still functioning before they moved on.

Six hours later they were out of the canyon and could see the damage left behind from the cloud. It was like the earth had been scorched black, specifically their path was charred.

"Let's move," Brad said. "What if something else is following that?"

"I sure as shit don't want to be hanging around here any longer than we have to," Ray agreed.

And so it started all over again, only now they knew their presence was known. Soon, if not already, The Traveler would know and he would send things to stop them. Nasty things.

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/0001fb26/)   


Nate was shaken awake by Ray.

"What is it?" he asked, able to tell that it wasn't time for his watch quite yet.

"Something just happened," Ray said. He was still kneeling over Nate in the dark. "I felt this pressure in my body, like somethin' tried to blow me up with air. When it quit...well...Nate."

"What?" Nate asked sitting up.

"I don't think we're in the same place anymore," Ray admitted. "Do you smell that? The air is different."

Nate breathed deeply, holding the air inside his lungs, trying to taste and smell it. Ray was right. It was stale all around them.

"Scoot back, Ray," Nate said before crossing his legs and dropping his head.

He relaxed his body and let his mind go as he had done so many times before, only when he tried to probe the area his body screamed in resistance. His eyes flew open as he reached out, grabbing Ray's arm for support before blacking out.

A sharp slap brought him back. The sun was rising, _two hours_ , Nate thought, _I've lost two hours_.

Brad was next to him, his hand on his shoulder.

"I hope your face doesn't bruise, but nothing else was working," Brad said, not looking sorry at all for slapping him. "Are you back with us?"

Nate pushed himself up, feeling his head spin for a moment. "Shit," he said trying to shake it off. His eyes scanned the area before landing back on Brad. "Where are Ray and Walt?"

"They're taking a look around to see what's out there," Brad said, still not letting go of Nate's shoulder. "What happened to you?" Brad asked. "Ray said you looked like you got electrocuted and then passed out."

"I tried to figure out where we are, what happened to us," Nate tried to explain as simply as he could. "But I was blocked; it was like a wall shot up in my mind."

Brad nodded. "How do you feel now?"

"Light headed," Nate admitted. "But fine."

Finally Brad sat back, relief showing throughout his whole body. He was handing Nate a bottle of water and a bit of food when the others returned.

"Thank fuck!" Ray said as he crossed himself at the sight of Nate sitting up next to Brad. "You nearly gave me a heart attack." And then Ray was dropping down and hugging him. Nate closed his eyes as he put his arm around Ray and leaned his head against his.

Ray let go and moved to sit next to Walt.

"What did you guys find?" Nate asked, but already having an idea of what they might have to say.

"Jack and shit," Ray blurted out at the same time Walt said, "Not a whole lot."

Walt began speaking again first. "There are some stone outcroppings a couple miles out; and all around the ground is more like small stones than actual sand. We're definitely not in the same place as before."

Nate studied Walt as he spoke and knew he could do it now; it was the set of his eyes, the glow of the blue in them. Walt could show them the way.

"I can't figure out where we are - for now at least. I think it's only temporary though," he started. "But we can't move until we know what direction we need to head. It won't do us any good to go two days east when we should have been going west."

"How should we do this then?" Brad asked from beside him.

They looked at each other for a second before Nate turned his eyes on Walt. "Walt's going to do it."

"I am?" Walt looked unsure, turning to Ray for assurance but he just shrugged.

"I think I'm being blocked specifically; nobody knows how you've evolved but me. Trust me," Nate said. "Trust yourself."

The circle fell silent as Walt thought about everything. Nate knew he could do this, but he had to believe in himself first. Five minutes later Walt nodded and held his hands out to Nate.

He said nothing as he took Walt's hands in his and let him feel his power, sharing what he could. It felt like the low hum of a fire when Walt tapped into it. " _Remember to breathe_ ," Nate said in his mind knowing that Walt would hear him.

Walt's grip on his hands got tighter and tighter as the seconds ticked by and their world went silent. He could feel Walt reaching out further and further. There was no telling how long they were out there in nothing, but then he felt Walt pulling back

The sun had moved over in the sky when Nate's eyes opened. He and Walt released hands, both of them flexing their fingers.

"Well," Walt began, "I'm pretty sure we're one day in the past and a hundred miles west."

"You're pretty sure, or you're sure?" Nate asked.

"I'm sure."

"Lead the way," Nate said smiling.


	6. Count to Three

_**Count to Three: Part 6**_  
  
 **Title:** Count to Three  
 **Part:** Part 6 (end) Deaths/Violent  
 **Author:** [](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/profile)[**l_s_d_me**](http://l-s-d-me.livejournal.com/)  
 **Pairing:** Brad/Nate; Ray and Walt

The path they were on was rockier than before, but almost better as it held more shaded areas with rocks and plants spotting the route.

"So we're basically right back where we started," Ray said. "Only coming from a different direction?"

"Basically," Nate said while they rested, passing water back and forth.

Brad stood up to stretch, raising his arms above his head and bending back and forth. Nate couldn't help but notice where his shirt rid up, his eyes not straying from that patch of skin.

"Get a room you two," Walt said, immediately followed by Ray doubling over with laughter.

"Oh my God, Walt!" Ray choked out. "You have definitely been hanging out with me too long."

Nate couldn't help but smile too as Brad crouched down looking very serious as he said, "I'm so disappointed in you, Walt."

For fun Nate ruffled his hand through Brad's hair, standing up to stretch his own legs. "It's alright," he mumbled as he continued smiling.

It didn't last though; as he straightened his gaze fell on a creature just reaching the crest of the hill in front of him. It walked like a human, but it looked as if it was some sort of beast.

"This is not good," Nate said calmly before pulling his knife from its sheath and throwing it forward before anybody else knew what was going on.

The knife hit its mark fifty yards out. It sliced through the Beast's skull right between its eyes. The cry that came from its throat sounded like steel being dragged on top of gravel; it bubbled through the air.

The other three were on their feet torn between staring at Nate and where the Beast lay.

"What the fuck was that?!" Brad asked.

But there wasn't time for an answer as two more rose up the hill coming after them.

"Move!" Nate yelled.

They all took off running with their weapons and bags in hand, flanked by the two other Beasts. A low growl sounded from behind Walt, he turned just in time to see the creature drop to the ground, a gunshot echoing to his left. They all picked up speed, willing each other to move faster when Ray got tackled.

“RAY!” Walt yelled, skidding on the sandy rock as he turned around just in time to be thrown backward by a blow to the chest and a Beast standing over him.

He hit the ground with a thud, all the air squeezing out of his lungs. A cloud of red burst through the air as the Beast’s head disappeared by half. All of the Beast's that had charged over the horizon were scattered, lying face down in the dirt, Ray struggling to get out from underneath one.

“Jesus, Brad,” Ray said as he stood, wiping his hands off on his pants. “I realize Nate is your Princess Buttercup or whatever, but try not to wait so long next time before killing those R.O.U.S.’s. That one almost had Walt.”

Walt huffed as he threw his arm around Ray’s shoulder. “Yeah, no thanks to you; try not to trip next time, Person.”

"We should leave here," Nate said, surveying the area. His eyes stopped on Walt, a needle thin strip of blood coming from the corner of his mouth. "Are you okay, Walt? You're bleeding," he said, pointing to where the blood was.

Walt's tongue darted out making contact with it. He frowned looking down at his body. "It's just a cut," he finally said. "I must've bit myself when I fell. Don't worry about it."

Ray handed Walt a handkerchief to wipe his face as they began to move out of the area, walking through the bloody path to pick up the items they'd dropped: an empty gun here, a bag there. Nate was dusting off a pack when a foreign noise pierced his ears. It was a strangled cry mixed with crunching. He whirled around at the same time as Ray and Brad to see Walt frozen in place, and inch off the ground, the fist of one of the creatures that had been chasing them through his chest. On instinct Nate drew his revolver and shot the Beast in the head, killing it for good.

Ray reached him first, cradling Walt to the ground as he slid off the Beast's arm; a hole straight through his chest. Nate wanted to throw up, to crawl into a hole and never come out. He had never hated himself as much as he did in that moment. Brad was at his side, his hand holding Nate by the elbow. "I thought it was dead, I thought it was dead" he was muttering over and over again, his mask breaking down by the second.

They walked up to Ray, his chest covered in blood as he held Walt. The tears on his face leaving clean streaks through the dirt that had caked on in the past few days. He was talking under his breath.

"I'm here Walt, I'm not going anywhere. You were there for me, and I'm gonna be here for you. We'll get through this. Don't worry. Don't worry. It'll be alright, everything will be alright. It's fine...It's fine," Ray told him, his voice growing weaker. "I'm not going to leave you."

Both Brad and Nate knelt down opposite Ray, their hands resting on Walt's body. Nate's eyes locked on the blood puddling beneath him. He watched as the sand around his body turned dark with blood, so incongruous from the land around them. It didn't look right and it hurt Nate's eyes to see.

"I'm sorry," he whispered before kissing two fingers and placing them on Walt's brow. "I hope you find peace somewhere."

Brad remained silent, but his face, for once, displayed everything he was feeling. But more than anything Nate couldn't take the look on Ray's face. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before. The despair he saw made his stomach churn again, only this time he couldn't hold it back any longer. He turned, moving a few feet before vomiting into the dirt.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. He didn't know what to do. They needed to move, needed to be away from all this death, but Ray was holding onto Walt's body so tightly, a lost look in his eyes, that Nate felt like a monster for wanting to suggest anything other than mourning. He moved back to them to see Brad with his hand squeezing Ray's shoulder.

"Get away from me," Ray said in a voice calmer than it should have been.

Brad didn't move.

"I said get the fuck away from me," Ray practically growled, his body seeming to shrink in on itself; His hand pushing the hair back from Walt's ashen white face with a shaking hand.

Nate squatted beside him. "Ray, come on," he said, resting a hand on Ray's thigh. "We can't..." he gulped back the bile threatening to rise in his throat again." We can't stay here."

Ray turned on him, his eyes red and puffy. "I'm not leaving him here. I won't leave him. I won't, he wouldn't leave me, and I won't leave him. I won't leave him. I can't."

"There's nothing we can do for him now," Brad said, his voice quiet. "Let him go."

"Fuck you, Brad," Ray spat, pushing him away. "Walt's fucking dead! And neither of you give a shit. Fuck. You just want to leave him here so the crows and God knows what can eat him, watch him fade into nothing."

"Nate," Brad said, getting up and motioning for him to move a few steps behind Ray. "What are we going to do? Ray's losing it, and fast. I'm worried about him."

Nate looked down at the pair. Ray looked like he wanted to disappear as he held tightly to Walt's hand. He was sitting as still as Nate had ever seen him before, unnaturally so. And Nate didn't know what to do.

"We need to leave, Brad," Nate started, almost pleading, hoping he would figure it out while speaking. "Fuck, we don't even have a way to bury Walt," he whispered as he ran his hand back through his hair. Brad's hand closed on his shoulder at the base of his neck. Fuck. None of it was supposed to go this way.

He closed his eyes against it all, willing his mind to clear. He breathed deep, but the smell of Walt's blood filling the air did nothing to calm him. Nate opened his eyes, Brad still at his side but his gaze was focused on Ray, his brow creased in concern.

"Come on," Nate said to Brad as he moved back to Ray. "Ray," he continued. "There's nothing we can do for him. He's somewhere better now, you have to believe that."

Ray remained silent.

"Look at me," Brad whispered as he squatted down beside him. Ray tilted his head in Brad's direction, not meeting his eyes, but staring down at his body, like he was unable to face anybody even if they were his brothers. "Walt's gone. I know how you feel, I feel it too. We need to move though, it's not safe here." Brad's voice was soft, not patronizing in anyway, but still it held a lilt to it that one could tell he was being careful with how he spoke.

"No," Ray's voice was wrecked.

"We have to get out of here," Brad told him.

"No."

Nate stepped to the other side of Walt so he could face Ray directly. "Don't let this defeat you Ray. Remember, you're stronger than you think."

"I'm not strong," Ray began speaking. "Walt was strong. I'm fucking weak, a useless piece of shit just like my father always told me. I'm nobody. Walt...Walt was somebody and now he's dead."

"Come on Ray," Brad said as he stood.

"I said no," Ray reiterated. "I'm not leaving."

"You'll die out here on your own Ray," Nate told him. "Come with us, we need you still."

"No."

Brad bent and slid his hands underneath Ray's arms to pull him up off of the ground. "Get up, buddy."

"Get off me, Brad," Ray's voice was lethal as he tried to pull out of Brad's grasp.

It was Brad's turn to say "no." as he continued to try and drag Ray to his feet.

Nate saw the movement a moment too late, heard the bang a moment too late, and the spray of blood that shot across Brad a moment too late. Nate saw everything too late for the first time in years and it scared him almost as much as what he was seeing.

Ray.

Motionless.

Brad’s rosewood revolver still tight in his grip.

Blood streaming down what was left of the right side of his head.

His body slumped down on top of Walt’s.

A look on his face that said he knew what he was doing and was happy to be with his friend.

Nate didn’t know how it had happened; how Ray managed to kill himself without either he or Brad noticing the movements as they occurred. But then Ray always was more clever than them by half, he would have known which angle to draw at, and the precise moment, that would go unnoticed. Leave it to Ray to figure out a way to best Nate.

“Oh shit… oh shit… Jesus Christ, Ray,” Brad’s voice cut through the fog in his brain.

Brad was kneeling on the ground next to Ray with a look of such a profound sadness on his face that Nate was scared of what Brad might do too. He couldn’t lose Brad now. Not now. Not when everything was breaking into pieces before his eyes. He stumbled to the ground next to him, his hand gripping Brad’s forearm tight enough to bruise. Brad has his hand pressed to Ray’s chest, a little below the heart and was muttering to himself. He kept repeating “you didn’t have to do this, we could’ve helped. You didn’t have to.”

Nate moved to cup Ray's face in his hands. "Don't worry anymore, Ray," he whispered between them. "We'll make everything alright again." He bent and leaned forehead to forehead against, visualizing sending Ray to a better place.

There was a low rumble in the distance. A warning. Like the night was waking up and telling them to leave this place. Brad stood and stared it down; watching as lighting broke across the sky. "We should leave," Brad said in a voice that seemed to not quite belong to him.

Nate stayed where he was, his head pressed to Ray's.

"Nate," Brad said louder as the lightning grew more frequent and the wind picked up. "We need to go. Now."

In one movement Nate pulled the revolver from Ray's hand, sliding it into Brad's holster as he stood.

"Run."

  
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](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/0001ghbg/)   


*

“They’re dead,” Brad said beneath his breath after they finally stopped running.

Nate looked up at him, the sand stinging his eyes as it blew around them, the wind causing his coat to billow out. “I know.”

“They’re dead,” Brad said stronger, his eyebrows creasing in confusion and pain.

A million things needed to be said, but they were jumbled with the million other things that Nate wanted to say like “motherfucker,” and “I quit,” and “this was a fucking fool’s errand.” All he could do though was agree with Brad. He felt like the part of him that had been made whole by their ka-tet was breaking; half of it left behind on the desert floor.

“They’re dead!” Brad yelled, inches from Nate’s face.

Nate jolted and shoved Brad. “I know that, Brad!” his chest rattling. “I was there too. And don’t fucking yell.”

He was screaming.

Brad grabbed his arm, staring down at him. “What was this for? Why did they have to die for this? Did you know this was going to happen?!”

“Fuck you, Brad. I’d rather have died than have to watch that.”

He watched as Brad’s eyes closed, his nostrils flaring. “Don’t…don’t say that,” Brad spat out. “Not you.”

Nate could feel the tears forming in his eyes, everything coming down on him at once. His knees buckled and instead of trying to hold him, Brad fell to his knees as well. The fight gone out of both of them. Nate was hot and tired, and thanking God that the night was falling. He unbuttoned his coat with numb fingers, pulling it off his now bruised arms. Brad did the same; their stuff strewn about the ground around them.

As if afraid to spook him, Nate leaned forward slowly to rest his head on Brad’s shoulder. He felt Brad exhale the breath he had been holding and give in to Nate’s touch.

The desert was silent around them as they moved. Spreading out on Nate’s duster, the pair shifted around each other as they touched. Brad’s hand came up, wiping a tear off Nate’s cheek before leaning in to kiss the spot. Nate wrapped an arm around Brad’s neck, forcing their faces back together. He could taste the salt from tears on Brad’s lips as they kissed, holding back nothing. Nate’s hands ran down Brad’s back, fingers dipping underneath the waistband of his pants. They pressed together, hard, and in that moment Nate thought of Ray and Walt, their deaths and what life had done to them. He could hear Brad muttering “it’s okay, Nate…. It’s okay,” as he kissed his face. Brad’s hands were everywhere; a reassuring presence up against his skin.

Nate rolled, pushing Brad down against the earth as he straddled him. “What was any of this for, Brad?” Nate whispered as he leaned his head down against Brad’s chest, his back curving up into the sky. His breath slowed as he felt himself being centered by Brad, a hand resting on the back of Nate's neck. They stayed like that, saying nothing, not moving, and barely breathing. Eventually Nate relaxed his posture and slid up Brad's body. They didn't talk about it, talking wouldn't do any good at this point anyway, but it was obvious that their path was nearing its end.

Everything was ending.

Nate's mouth connected with Brad's in one fluid movement. A quiet sound came from Brad's chest as Nate's tongue made contact with his own. At once the sound was locked away in Nate's memory forever; or however long "forever" was for them now.

It took but a minute for them to remove their clothes and come back together; their skin a mixture of cool and hot from the night air coming in contact with the sweat drying on their skin. They lit no fire that night because they didn't want to draw attention to themselves, but it didn't matter. Nate could see Brad perfectly in the moonlight, the blue light reflecting off yards of skin. He slid his fingers into Brad's mouth. The way he sucked on them, wetting them caused all of Nate's muscles to tense at once. His eyes closed and he could feel them begin to tear. Nate's fingers slid out of Brad's mouth, shining wet. He trailed the back of his hand down Brad's chest, grazing over his erection before moving lower and pressing in.

Brad thrust his hips upward, his eyes on Nate's. He moved his fingers in a circular motion, a smile tugging at his lips as Brad's mouth dropped open and his eyes fluttered.

"I need you," Brad whispered as he turned his head to place an open mouth kiss on Nate's wrist. "Please."

Everything was still as Nate pushed forward, moving as slowly as he could with nothing but spit to smooth the way. But Brad took him; both of them shaking with restrain and want. Their faces were inches apart and Nate could see it all in Brad's eyes, the loss of their brothers, the connection between them, and the road they were speeding down.

They were one now, forever.

*

Nate slept, lulled into darkness by the sound of Brad’s breathing next to him. He found himself in New York City, a small apartment full of all the things people should have: a couch, chairs, television, dining room table, food, pictures on the walls.

Ray and Walt.

A home. Together. Happy.

His eyes fell onto the two men sitting on the couch smiling and laughing as they watched the party on television. They had half empty pizza boxes open on the table in front of them with beer cans scattered around.

Seeing them made Nate feel like he was standing in the sunlight.

“Why did we need champagne?” Walt asked Ray, the smile never leaving his face.

“It’s New Year’s Eve, dude,” Ray said, looking at him like he was special. “You have to have champagne on New Year’s Eve.”

“That’s what you said when I asked why we were wearing these ridiculous glasses,” Walt muttered.

They were each wearing a pair of bright pink glasses covered in glitter. One pair had a large 2-0 over the eyes, and the other had 0-0. And they were sitting there so that if one looked at them as a pair their glasses would read 2000, the coming New Year. The crowds yelled and laughed outside in the street, the celebration reaching a fever pitch. Yet they just sat with each other, happy and having their own celebration.

A sound on the television caught their attention and they jumped up as they began counting down.

 _10_

 _9_

 _8_

 _7_

The yelling outside got louder. The number seven giving the countdown a greater force.

 _6_

 _5_

Ray threw his arm over Walt’s shoulders.

 _4_

 _3_

 _2_

 _1_

Walt yelled “HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!” as he and Ray hugged, holding on tightly to each other while the new millennium chimed in. They were happy and together again, no pain in their eyes, no injuries, with life flowing through their bodies.

Nate blinked hard as he watched them, peace finally settling in his mind. It was okay. Everything would be okay because no matter what happened to them in this life, they will find a way to make it in another. A better life.

The two of them picked up their champagne glasses and clinked them together.

“Happy New Year,” Ray said his eyes bright as he smiled.

“Happy New Year, Ray.”

Nate awoke for a moment, his head clear, a renewed hope that he and Brad would succeed. He reached out the few inches between them and grasped Brad’s hand, feeling him squeeze in return.

It would all be okay.

*

In the morning Nate shared everything with Brad; what he saw and how his dream felt. It gave them solace as they ate their breakfast, crouched around the small fire they built at dawn.

"And they were happy?" Brad asked, some of the darkness lifting from behind his eyes.

Nate nodded, letting his face tell Brad the answer.

Brad exhaled and pushed himself up to stand. "Good," he said before stamping out their fire. "Now let's finish this."

*

The sun didn’t set for the next three days.

*

They pushed harder and faster through the desert as it began fading behind them. Nate knew they were close, he could feel a drumming in his skin willing him in the right direction. It pulled at him until he felt as though he wasn’t even himself anymore, but some unearthly creature that moved for one purpose and one purpose alone.

But when he truly started to lose himself, Brad was there, reeling him back in and making sure he didn’t run himself, or both of them, dead.

Nate knew he wouldn’t die in that moment though. He knew that this is what he was born to do; why he was the way he was. Everything in his body was screaming for him to move and do it now!

Two days before, they had left everything that wasn’t a necessity behind. They carried their water, what little food they had, and evenly split up carrying the weapons Ray and Walt had before their end. Nate kept the key safe on a necklace around his neck. They left their coats, extra packs, and anything that would hold them up behind.

“What is it?” Nate asked as they paused for a minute beside an outcropping. Brad was looking at him like he had never seen him before.

“You’re changing,” he said bluntly. “It’s your eyes. It’s almost as if there’s gold burning through them. I know that makes no fucking sense Nate,” he paused. “But I can see it.”

Nate moved into Brad's space, their chests touching. "What do you see?"

Brad took a deep breath and reached out to hold Nate's face. His eyes roamed over Nate before finally settling on his eyes. The fingers gripping Nate tightened as Brad just stared at him. It was like the first time they ever touched outside of Brad's apartment in what seemed like a lifetime ago.

"Life," Brad whispered, surprising Nate. "It's like this power that...that holds life."

It took Nate approximately two seconds to press his lips against Brad's once he realized that he could give Brad a taste of what he was feeling. The power. As their mouths moved in unison Nate let his mind clear, _one_ ; he fisted his hands in the sides of Brad's shirt before relaxing his body against him, _two_ ; he felt Brad's grip tighten as he released part of what he was carrying into Brad, _three_.

Nate was fully aware of when it hit Brad; his gasp as his whole body straightened spoke volumes. He had never shared this with anyone before; he hadn't even tried until now, but a lot of things had changed and part of Nate didn't want this world to end without having shared it with somebody.

He waited a few minutes before pulling it back, kissing Brad through it.

Brad was shaking slightly when they broke apart. "How did you do that?" he asked breathless.

In truth Nate didn't know, so he just shrugged and told him, "I counted to three."

The smile that curved on Brad's lips was the first that he had seen in a week. With everything going on there hadn't been much to smile about. There actually hadn't been much hope; at least, not until now. Nate could see it in Brad now though just as Brad had seen it in him.

They spent the next hour with their backs pressed against the shaded rocks beneath the outcrop. Nate idly polished his revolver as Brad stared off into the distance, scanning the horizon. They did nothing but rest. It amazed them how much not having any respite from the sun bearing down on them could change their whole mind-sets. Every hour worsened for them, but it was also one very clear and unmistakable sign: they were close.

When they finally started moving again it was with renewed speed. They ran through the point where the desert faded into grass and suddenly it was easier to breathe; they sped up. The world was silent still except for the swish, swish of their pants against blades of grass, and the crunching of rocks underneath their boots.

Three days and nothing. Not one sound, not one animal, not one word of warning or signs that the world outside of their bubble even existed. There was nothing until Nate turned north and saw it: the Cradle of Civilization.

The air smelled rich like summer as they closed in on it. Suddenly there were trees everywhere seeming to thicken around them as they ran on, and on, and on. The top of the structure was visible over the line above the branches; it looked a dull brown in the distance, innocuous. Nate slowed them down to a walk as they approached a thicket of bushes that reached at least two feet above their heads.

"This is it," Nate said with a look to Brad.

Brad nodded, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When they opened Nate saw resolve and power there; he knew everything had lead them to this point in time.

"For Ray and Walt," Brad said.

"For Ray and Walt," Nate repeated, closing his hand around the back of Brad's neck.

Nate felt like he needed to thank Brad, to give some sort of speech to give them hope, but that wasn't him and it certainly wasn't Brad. So he simply squeezed Brad's neck once more and nodded at him. Brad smiled at him with a look that said he was ready and that whatever was in their way had better beware; and in the end that was all the two of them needed.

At the same time they pushed into the thick brush, twigs and thorns scratching at their faces and hands. It got darker the further they went. Pretty soon Nate could see only a couple feet in front of him. He stopped when he realized Brad wasn't beside him anymore.

"Brad," he yelled in a little more than a whisper.

Nothing.

He tried again and listened. To the side he thought he saw the flash of an arm pass by; it was all he had to go on so he followed. He sped forward always watching for a glimpse. Everything was getting darker and then he saw him standing there, his back turned to Nate.

"Are you okay?" Nate asked as he closed the distance between them.

When he turned Nate nearly dropped to the ground.

It was Walt, or at least, some form of whatever was left behind in this world when he passed.

Nate mouthed his name, not trusting his own voice. Walt smiled and tilted his head to the side, motioning to the right. Nate followed the movement with his eyes, peering into the darkness. When he looked back to Walt he was gone. With little thought Nate tore off in the direction Walt pointed to, his trust in his brother still strong in death.

He followed the path for what felt like an hour. Finally, light was streaming through the brush letting Nate know that he was moving in the right direction, whether it was to Brad or to the Cradle, he knew it would take him where he was meant to be. He slowed as he entered a clearing, hearing rustling to the left of him. Without warning Brad passed into the clearing, not seeing Nate at first.

"Nate," Brad rushed out and pulled him into a hug.

Nate froze for a second before responding. Brad felt shaky to the touch.

"Ray," Brad whispered directly into Nate's ear. "Ray led me here."

Something pulled deep inside of Nate. "'Til the end," he said.

"I don't know how we got split up," Brad started as they broke apart. "I was right next to you, and then suddenly you were gone."

"There's darkness at play here," Nate said. "He'll be waiting for us, Brad, we have to be ready. I have no idea what we're going to see when we pass through, but it won't be easy."

Brad shook his head. "Don't worry," he said. "Nothing can stop us now."

And Nate believed him. "Check your weapons, in five minutes we move."

*

The breath nearly left Nate's body when his eyes fully set on what he had been striving to reach for what felt like a lifetime as the Cradle rose above him. Part of him was surprised by its appearance, for it looked like nothing more than a simple three story wooden house. Nate remembered seeing pictures of houses just like it on farms in the earlier years of the English settlement in America. It had a porch that wrapped around it, shutters, railings, and paned windows. But up close, standing in its shadow, it rose up as if it had a pulse, breathing life.

The grounds looked empty except for the two of them steadily walking forward, trying their best not to disturb the world around them more than necessary. The longer they went unnoticed, the better. Nate's eyes were examining the Cradle, noting the doors and windows, how the planks on the porch looked used and half warped, when Brad grabbed his arm.

"There's something up there," he said, keeping his eyes forward. "The light is bending in an odd way about forty yards ahead."

Nate focused his eyes that distance and saw it. Now that he knew what he was looking for he could see them everywhere, beings cloaked by some spell.

"What are they?" Brad whispered as they continued their slower pace.

"I don't think they're here to harm us," Nate said. "I think they're guardians of some sort, or maybe they've just come to watch the show."

"Maybe they're a warning," Brad said, his fingers dancing on the side of his holster.

"No," Nate stopped. "But they are," he said as his two men stepped into view.

They looked ordinary enough, dressed in black pants and white t-shirts, but they moved like snakes. It took mere seconds for more to appear, and before they knew it there were fifteen men in groups of twos and threes.

"And so it begins," Nate said before drawing his gun and firing.

He made sure to aim around the guardians and checked that Brad was doing the same. He wouldn't hurt them; they weren't there to cause anyone harm. Within two minutes the fifteen men were dead, blood sprayed around them. Brad looked at him with confusion and Nate knew exactly what he was thinking: why hadn't they put up a defense? The bodies laid there motionless as Nate and Brad stepped around them.

The first step up onto the porch was inches away when a hiss rose behind them. Brad lurched to the side as one of the men grabbed his ankle, pulled it to his mouth and bit. The sound of the bone in Brad's ankle snapping cut through the air like a gunshot.

Brad grunted in pain, but stayed upright. Nate shot the man off of Brad's ankle without even aiming; its head disappearing into a burst of red. The others began crawling towards them like some sort of demented form of lizard, arms and legs bent at angles that aren't possible in humans. But then, they weren't human. It wasn't like they were moving fast, but with their steady rate they crowded quickly into Brad and Nate's space, closing in on them.

Nate grabbed Brad's arm and began helping him move back towards the steps, his foot bent at a distorted angle.

"Fuck," Brad muttered under his breath.

And that's when it happened; the creatures swarmed them like flies, grabbing a hold of the pair, tearing Brad and Nate in different directions. Nate elbowed one in the face and heard its nose crack, giving him enough time to draw Walt's shotgun which he kept strapped to his back. Brad was fighting his own battle beside him, doing his best to keep the upper hand.

One, Two, Three, shells pumped and fired into the faces of their attackers, making sure to get their heads. When it emptied Nate flipped it around and used the butt of it to crush their skulls. Immediately he saw It over the creature's heads - the Traveler - practically floating toward them. He looked like nothing more than a man. Nate needed to get inside and he needed to do it now.

"Go!" Brad yelled from beside him, shaking off the beings that were still coming, still trying to overpower him in his weakened state. There was a bruise already forming on Brad's cheek and a line of blood streaming from the side of his mouth. Nate shook his head in refusal.

"If It gets the key and opens the door, it'll have all been for nothing; now go!" Brad told him, his eyes flaring. Then, thrusting himself up with everything he had, Brad tore off of the porch, the human-lizard hybrids desperately clinging to his body, trying to pull him to the ground. Nate watched as Brad drew his rosewood revolver and began shooting at the Traveler, hitting It once in the leg, and again in the arm.

The last thing Nate saw before he turned was Brad being dragged to his knees and taking aim with his last bullet. All Nate could do was hope, somehow, that Brad would make it through.

Nate pushed in the opposite direction, slamming the front door open with a loud bang. Inside was dead silent as the door shut behind him, sealing him off from the rest of the world. The smell of flowers and moss reached his nose as he ran straight up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He pulled on the leather strap around his neck which held the key. It snapped just as he reached the top of the steps. There. At the end of the hallway was the door he had been searching for. Nate used all his strength to push the final few feet. In his mind he saw a quick succession of pictures: remembering the first night they were all together, Ray humming that song to himself in quiet moments, Walt looking up happily when he felt a hand on his back, and Brad's...well...everything about Brad.

His fist punched the door as he slid to a halt, sliding the key in as a hollow scream arose from below; but he couldn't think about that now. He had to turn the key.

 _Click._

The door opened slowly in front of him, bright light streaming in from the windows.

Nate walked with confidence, looking around him. Sometimes he forgot what it was like to just be himself; to just be. He'd never felt anything like this before; a sensation so absolute, so strong within himself. The noise around him was comfortable if not a little overwhelming.

Nate could feel it everywhere, there were eyes on him.

He moved further, shifting his shoulder and slightly changing the set of his hips; disappearing within a crowd. He was surrounded by people, traffic, buildings. The asphalt beneath his feet felt solid and strong.

Nate was hyper aware of the man on the motorcycle watching him. A horn blared and Nate turned to look, thinking he would see the motorcycle moving past him in the road. But he was still sitting there, his bright blue eyes piercing right through Nate's guise.

Nate's breath caught in his throat, knowing at once that he was one of them; one of his.

 _So this is how it starts_ , ran through Nate's head over and over again. _The first of the three._

  
[   
](http://pics.livejournal.com/l_s_d_me/pic/0001hc5a/)   


  


END

  


  
_"Go, then. There are other worlds than these."  
\- John "Jake" Chambers_   



	7. Count to Three: Footnotes

_  
**Count to Three: Footnotes**   
_   
  
**Footnotes:**

Books Mentioned:

 _Drawing of Three_ by Stephen King (Dark Tower Series II)  
 _Song of Susannah_ by Stephen King (Dark Tower Series VI)  
 _Catch 22_ by Joseph Heller

 **Phrases and Items:**

The Dark Tower series.

 _Ka_ \- Fate

 _Ka-tets_ \- Group brought together by Ka

 _The Rosewood Revolvers_

 _“I do not aim with my hand;  
He who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I aim with my eye.”  
"I do not shoot with my hand;  
He who shoots with his hand has forgotten the face of his father. I shoot with my mind."  
"I do not kill with my gun;  
He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart."_ **\- The Wastelands (Dark Tower Series III)**

 _"This is more than visualization - you know that, right? She supposed she did. Something had changed her - had changed all of them. Jake had gotten the touch, which was a kind of telepathy. Eddie had grown (was still growing) into some sort of ability to create powerful, talismanic objects - one of them had already served to open a door between two worlds. And she?"_ **\- Song of Susannah**

 _"Go, then. There are other worlds than these." John "Jake" Chambers_ **\- The Gunslinger (Dark Tower I)**

Catch 22.

 _"It was love at first sight.  
The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him."_

 _"I mean it, Yossarian. You'll have to keep on your toes every minute of every day. They'll bend heaven and earth to catch you."_

The Princess Bride

Princess Buttercup  
R.O.U.S. - Rodents of Unusual Size

 **Photographs:**

All photos used were found by either Google and then edited by myself, hand drawn personally, or drawn by alethea293

 **Songs:**

"Come on Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners.  
"Take On Me" by A-Ha


End file.
